Still trying to learn all I can before I buy the cam for the 496 we are building. Could someone explane the pros and cons between using a hydrolic roller vs a mechanical roller. How often do the tapits on the mechanical cams need to be adjusted? It has been along time since I owned car that had a soild lifter cam in it. The '69 chevelle is going to be used for street/strip use and some road tripes to car shows. Thanks for your ideas.

I've adjusted the valve lash on my flat tappet cam 3 times this year,not because they needed it,was looking for a little performance gain. I would say you might have to lash the valves once a year. I would go solid roller for max performance, or the hydraulic roller for your application.

Some hydraulic rollers have difficulty being as consistent and powerful as a solid roller at higher rpm's. Its due to the weight of the lifter, and the fact that the high valve spring pressure associated with a roller cam is distributed to the plunger of the lifter, not the main body. In your case, a fast and streetable 496 that fits the bill should not need to be revved much over 5500rpm to go very fast. Meaning that you should not encounter any huge amount of issues with the hydro lifter at high rpm, cause there is enough displacement there that it should not be necessary by any means to build a high rpm screamer just to pull down a good time slip when it is raced. Using about a 2500rpm converter max, a 3.23-3.55 gear and a good hydro roller that spins strong, peaking at 5500(probably shift at 5800 at most) will still be terribly fast compared to most any car you run into on a regular basis on the street. If you want all the power you can get for your money, go solid roller. As Rapid Robert said, if you use good valvetrain components as well, lash settings will be very infrequent. A newer valvetrain just dont need as much attention they did back in the day when everything that was intended to be fast had a ginormous camshaft and of course valvetrain hardware that is 35+ years behind where we are now. Good luck.

I haven't had to set lash on my solid for over two years - but it has seen limited mileage the past 2 years. If you torque down the poly locks tight after tightening the set screw it holds plenty tight. I don't like the hydraulic rollers due to thier weight and like the simplicity of a solid (either flat tappet or roller).