[cwilks]

Gold Roller Rockers are about the best going out there???? I can get a brand new set for $269 shipped to my door.....should I go for it??

 

[trmnatr]

Gold Roller Rockers are about the best going out there???? I can get a brand new set for $269 shipped to my door.....should I go for it??

In My Opinion,,,

Crane Gold Race Rockers are the best stud mounted rocker and do not need to be used unless its a hyd roller or solid roller engine

Crane Silver Race AKA Crane Blue Racer now days are about the same as Gold Race but not as strong making them a great choice for flat tappet cams and some hyd roller engines

Crane shaft mounts are a great design and strong too

Just my $.02

 

[RB69SS396Conv]

Not really.

They're OK; but, they're still just aluminum-body rockers, with all that's not so good about that.

Like ANY aluminum rockers, they are certainly not the best choice for the street. For race ONLY, the aluminum problem isn't really so much of a problem, so they're fine for that. But not for the street.

So whether you should "go for it" depends on your intended use.

I would STRONGLY suggest a steel body rocker for the street; either the Comp 1300 or 1100 series, or Crower.

 

[trmnatr]

Not really.

They're OK; but, they're still just aluminum-body rockers, with all that's not so good about that.

Like ANY aluminum rockers, they are certainly not the best choice for the street. For race ONLY, the aluminum problem isn't really so much of a problem, so they're fine for that. But not for the street.

So whether you should "go for it" depends on your intended use.

I would STRONGLY suggest a steel body rocker for the street; either the Comp 1300 or 1100 series, or Crower.

How can you say so?

Have you used 6-10 sets and had failure out of them?

I can tell you i have used ALOT of them and had two single rocker arms fail, One was due to the rocker arm and the other one failed when a valve spring broke and the valve kissed the piston

I have used Gold Race rockers on the street with 650 pounds open pressure turning 7,000-7500rpm with NO ISSUES

 

[RB69SS396Conv]

Not interested in arguing about it in those terms.

"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance".

Anyone with aircraft experience will know INSTANTLY what the problem with an aluminum moving part is.

I've seen ALOT LOT LOT more than 6 - 10 sets of aluminum rockers, of all brands types colors and ages, fail in THE EXACT SAME WAY, on the street. Which, any aircraft guy will be familiar with what that way is.

Namely, they work GREAT, perfectly fine, for months or years; then suddenly one day, with no kind of warning whatsoever, one of them just breaks in half somewhere (usually out near the tip, but soetimes the trunnion breaks in half), out of the clear blue. At least one of those sets in my experience got parked one night running perfectly, and when the owner cranked it up the next morning to go to work, it had a dead miss and popped back through the carb. Guess what.

Aluminum suffers from "fatigue" failure. It does not crack or otherwise show that a failure is about to happen. This is why the FAA madates that certain stressed parts in aircraft be replaced every x years, or y thousand hours (or y hundred hours of operation in a helicopter), or z landings. No inspection and approval, no exceptions, no excuses, no alternatives. Throw away and replace. You cannot tell, by looking, whether that part will go one more, or 5 more, or 500 more, units of wear; you just know, it's no good any more. It's used up and you're taking your life, and the lives of your passengers, in your hands, if you continue to use it.

Furthermore, it is a statistical matter, not a hard-and-fast "you get 12,731.8 miles if you run 221 lbs on the seat and 487 lbs open and only run it to 7,168 RPM 2 times and 7,094 RPM 3 times". It's more like, if you put a thousand sets of aluminum rockers into 1000 random cars, you'd get a pattern something like 10% would die by 10,000 miles (probably not the fault of the rockers), 20% would die by 20,000 miles, 80% would die by 30,000 miles, and 99.9% would die by 40,000 miles. Not necesarily those exact numbers, but a similar pattern, with different absolute values. If you graphed it, it would look sort of like falling off a cliff: and the easiest way to determine where the edge of that cliff is, would be to count the number of stress-relief cycles. Not the amount of the stress, but rather, how many times the stress on the part cycled from zero to peak and back.

Moving parts should be steel for the street. Racing and street usage put an entirely different pattern of stresses on parts; just because a particular kind of part is good for the one, does not qualify it for the other. Richmond drag racing gears are a great example: they'll last 10 times as long as street gears in a racing application, but street gears will alst 10 times as long in a street application. It's not about "quality", it's about "suitability for purpose".

 

[Speedfreek]

I have heard nothing but good things about the Crane Gold rockers. :yes:

 

[427mike]

I'd throw Harland Sharp' s in the argument for best roller rocker

 

[novaderrik]

Not interested in arguing about it in those terms.

"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance".

Anyone with aircraft experience will know INSTANTLY what the problem with an aluminum moving part is.

I've seen ALOT LOT LOT more than 6 - 10 sets of aluminum rockers, of all brands types colors and ages, fail in THE EXACT SAME WAY, on the street. Which, any aircraft guy will be familiar with what that way is.

Namely, they work GREAT, perfectly fine, for months or years; then suddenly one day, with no kind of warning whatsoever, one of them just breaks in half somewhere (usually out near the tip, but soetimes the trunnion breaks in half), out of the clear blue. At least one of those sets in my experience got parked one night running perfectly, and when the owner cranked it up the next morning to go to work, it had a dead miss and popped back through the carb. Guess what.

Aluminum suffers from "fatigue" failure. It does not crack or otherwise show that a failure is about to happen. This is why the FAA madates that certain stressed parts in aircraft be replaced every x years, or y thousand hours (or y hundred hours of operation in a helicopter), or z landings. No inspection and approval, no exceptions, no excuses, no alternatives. Throw away and replace. You cannot tell, by looking, whether that part will go one more, or 5 more, or 500 more, units of wear; you just know, it's no good any more. It's used up and you're taking your life, and the lives of your passengers, in your hands, if you continue to use it.

Furthermore, it is a statistical matter, not a hard-and-fast "you get 12,731.8 miles if you run 221 lbs on the seat and 487 lbs open and only run it to 7,168 RPM 2 times and 7,094 RPM 3 times". It's more like, if you put a thousand sets of aluminum rockers into 1000 random cars, you'd get a pattern something like 10% would die by 10,000 miles (probably not the fault of the rockers), 20% would die by 20,000 miles, 80% would die by 30,000 miles, and 99.9% would die by 40,000 miles. Not necesarily those exact numbers, but a similar pattern, with different absolute values. If you graphed it, it would look sort of like falling off a cliff: and the easiest way to determine where the edge of that cliff is, would be to count the number of stress-relief cycles. Not the amount of the stress, but rather, how many times the stress on the part cycled from zero to peak and back.

Moving parts should be steel for the street. Racing and street usage put an entirely different pattern of stresses on parts; just because a particular kind of part is good for the one, does not qualify it for the other. Richmond drag racing gears are a great example: they'll last 10 times as long as street gears in a racing application, but street gears will alst 10 times as long in a street application. It's not about "quality", it's about "suitability for purpose".

someone should have told the guys at GM Powertrain that dreamt up the LT4 Vette motors in the mid 90's about this- and also the guys responsible for the development of the Gen 3 engines back about that time, as well.
i'm sure they would be happy to hear about how they have millions of engines out there that each have 16 failure prone parts in them.

 

[trmnatr]

Not interested in arguing about it in those terms.

"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance".

Anyone with aircraft experience will know INSTANTLY what the problem with an aluminum moving part is.

I've seen ALOT LOT LOT more than 6 - 10 sets of aluminum rockers, of all brands types colors and ages, fail in THE EXACT SAME WAY, on the street. Which, any aircraft guy will be familiar with what that way is.

Namely, they work GREAT, perfectly fine, for months or years; then suddenly one day, with no kind of warning whatsoever, one of them just breaks in half somewhere (usually out near the tip, but soetimes the trunnion breaks in half), out of the clear blue. At least one of those sets in my experience got parked one night running perfectly, and when the owner cranked it up the next morning to go to work, it had a dead miss and popped back through the carb. Guess what.

Aluminum suffers from "fatigue" failure. It does not crack or otherwise show that a failure is about to happen. This is why the FAA madates that certain stressed parts in aircraft be replaced every x years, or y thousand hours (or y hundred hours of operation in a helicopter), or z landings. No inspection and approval, no exceptions, no excuses, no alternatives. Throw away and replace. You cannot tell, by looking, whether that part will go one more, or 5 more, or 500 more, units of wear; you just know, it's no good any more. It's used up and you're taking your life, and the lives of your passengers, in your hands, if you continue to use it.

Furthermore, it is a statistical matter, not a hard-and-fast "you get 12,731.8 miles if you run 221 lbs on the seat and 487 lbs open and only run it to 7,168 RPM 2 times and 7,094 RPM 3 times". It's more like, if you put a thousand sets of aluminum rockers into 1000 random cars, you'd get a pattern something like 10% would die by 10,000 miles (probably not the fault of the rockers), 20% would die by 20,000 miles, 80% would die by 30,000 miles, and 99.9% would die by 40,000 miles. Not necesarily those exact numbers, but a similar pattern, with different absolute values. If you graphed it, it would look sort of like falling off a cliff: and the easiest way to determine where the edge of that cliff is, would be to count the number of stress-relief cycles. Not the amount of the stress, but rather, how many times the stress on the part cycled from zero to peak and back.

Moving parts should be steel for the street. Racing and street usage put an entirely different pattern of stresses on parts; just because a particular kind of part is good for the one, does not qualify it for the other. Richmond drag racing gears are a great example: they'll last 10 times as long as street gears in a racing application, but street gears will alst 10 times as long in a street application. It's not about "quality", it's about "suitability for purpose".[/quote]





Aluminum is intended to be durable in COLD temps,, Not hot like an engine. It doesnt take an aircraft engineer to know that. This is where Aluminum alloys come into play

Im not an engineer and im not gonna act like one.

So you didnt answer my question, you have seen alot more than 6-10 sets of aluminum roller rocker arms BUT HAVE YOU USED MORE THAN 6-10 SETS OF CRANE GOLDS ?? If the answer is no then you cant speak for the rockers other than your limited use of them because t would be just that, limited use of Crane Gold Race Rockers. Do you use enough Crane Gold Race Rockers to the extent where they made a minor body change so they sent you all new mock up rockers ??

Huh? Usually (99.9% of the time) when the rocker body breaks by the tip its because a valve thats kissed a piston

Yes, same thing with aluminum rods and steel rods. Its all gonna break, its just a matter of time and the forces the given part is up against. Get a thin aluminum rod and a coat hanger, bend them several times. Both are gonna break but at different times. Steel will break too

HUH??????? This your gonna have to explain alot. Where is your proof on this ?

Your joking, right? You cant comapre gears or axles to anything. The torque of the engine is getting greater through the torque converter, greater in low gear then even greater by the rear gear ratio AND the rear gears get a beating on them because they have to handle all that power plus the load of the car,, Your comparing an apple to a Coke Can

Now i can tell you Pro Gears will not break on the street HOWEVER the HARDER (harder like a steel rocker VS aluminum) Street Gears will break after minimal passes at the track

BTW, the colors highlighted in the QUOTE have questions/comments in my reply in the same color as in the quote

 

[427mike]

Stainless roller rockers are obviously stronger...No question...But, I have run Harland Sharp aluminum roller rockers for years without failure on the street and at the track as well as Comp Aluminum rockers (the red ones)...

 

[rustbucket79]

I've replaced old Gold race rockers that were of the ancient small trunion style because the bearings were getting sloppy and it just felt like the right time, the bodies were still in tact. (I do agree that aluminum work hardens over time and will eventually fail)

Stainless rockers like the Comps have their own problems. I've had to replace some of them due to the rocker (roller tip) wear into the body after a few seasons in a BBC. If you're dealing with SBC's, good luck fitting a 1.550 or larger retainer with any of their stainless rockers, the fulcrum area is just too bloody large and it forces you into clearancing the rocker, running lash caps, etc just to get them to clear.

I think most will agree that decent quality aluminum roller rockers will outlast the engine in most circumstances, and the Crane's fall into the category of quality.

 

[540Hotrod]

I literally ran a set of the old Crane Energizer rockers for over 20 years on the street that included 2000+ mile road trips regularly. Primarily on .600+ lift solid flat tappets, but the last few years were with solid rollers in the .650 to .700 lift range with springs to match. They never broke but finally started to get loose in trunnion area. I sold them to a guy at a swapmeet who wanted to keep them as spares in his toolbox!

I'm currently running Comp steels on exhausts and Comp Stainless on intakes. No reason for the stainless other than I got them from a buddy because they were 1.8 ratio. The Comps have run about 8-9 years now with well over .700 lift on the street and track too.

I'm not scared of GOOD aluminum rockers. Stay away from ProForm junk.

JIM

 

[RB69SS396Conv]

I used the Richmond gears as another example, along with aluminum rockers, of something that might work fine for racing - maybe even better than other alternatives. But when used for a street application, they fail. Why? because they are purpose-built: and when used for the intended purpose, they're excellent, but mis-applied to a street application, they experience short life, noise, etc. etc. etc. - precisely because the feature that makes them superior for racing, dooms them on the street. Aluminum moving parts fall into the same category. Since the nature of the stresses over the lifetime of a racing part is different from a street part, it's easily possible to create a part that is superior for the one application, but unsuitable for the other.

It really doesn't matter "how many sets I've used", or "what brand they are", or "what color they are", or what GM used. I can tell you that the ONLY reason GM used those rockers in the LT4 kit, is because THEY FIT WITHOUT MODIFICATION (specifically, the "narrow-body" version does - they're the only model on the market AFAIK that the trunnion fits down between the valve cover bolt "towers" on 87-up heads). The problem remains, they're ALUMINUM, and they fail the same as any other aluminum rocker when used on the street, in the same way and for the same reason.

Temperature isn't the issue in aircraft parts. That's why landing gear parts, jet engine parts, rotor parts, and even certain airframe structural members, HAVE TO BE replaced at specified intervals. It's because "they" know that the part has been put through however many cycles of stress, and it's nearing the "cliff" effect of failure.

Cognitive dissonance ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance ) is a wonderful thing, isn't it? As is "confirmation bias", another common behavior pattern ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias ). There seems to be alot of both of those in our hobby. People don't like to be told that whatever thing they just spent their money on, isn't the "best"; so they find, or if necessary invent, reasons to justify their decision. Facts don't necessarily interfere. So instead, we hear alot of "everybody says", or "it worked for me", or "<insert big-name appeal to authority here> does it so it must be right", or other logical fallacies, to fill in the "knowledge gap". But we can do better than that if we try.

So, as said, I stand by my advice NOT to use aluminum rockers on the street, but rather to use one of the higher-quality steel sets such as those I mentioned. NOT CAT, or similar knock-off stuff. For racing, you might do one thing, where you know for example that a 10-second run at 7000 RPM results in exactly 1166.67 engine revolutions, and THAT'S the "unit of measurement" of design lifetime; as opposed to a street engine, where 1000 miles is somewhere around THREE MILLION engine revolutions more or less, and that means that if you want your engine to last for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of miles, you need a part that can stand HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of reps, not just a few thousand. Again, I'm talking about suitability for purpose, and NOT "quality". I have no problem with the Crane aluminum rockers (or any other brand) being thought of as "good"; just, not the right choice for street use.

 

[66 BRONZE]

I'd throw Harland Sharp' s in the argument for best roller rocker

^^^^What he said:thumbsup: And for the record I have seen plenty of steel rockers break on a street engine including a stamp steel GM unit. IMHO if you have aluminum roller rocker's, odds are you have an engine that makes desent power or a lot of power. Parts break, I don't care what there made of.

 

[Calculated Risk]

Gold Roller Rockers are about the best going out there????

No, not the best out there. It is a quality rocker, but it's not perfect for every application.

 

[Jcdubs]

Crane gold's are great!
Hell, I ran a set of Cam Dynamic aluminum rollers for 20 years 80,000 hard miles and they are still on my 355.

 

[o6r1man]

I crane gold on my solid roller 496 that see 6,500 plus everytime I drive and no problems yet.

 

[novaderrik]

It really doesn't matter "how many sets I've used", or "what brand they are", or "what color they are", or what GM used. I can tell you that the ONLY reason GM used those rockers in the LT4 kit, is because THEY FIT WITHOUT MODIFICATION (specifically, the "narrow-body" version does - they're the only model on the market AFAIK that the trunnion fits down between the valve cover bolt "towers" on 87-up heads). The problem remains, they're ALUMINUM, and they fail the same as any other aluminum rocker when used on the street, in the same way and for the same reason.

GM used the Crane aluminum roller rockers on the LT4 not becasue they fit- but becasue they had crane engineer them to not only fit that application, but to pass all of the durability tests that they put EVERY production engine thru before releasing it for production.
there are thousands of people out there that use these kinds of "race only" rocker arms on everything from mild true daily drivers that get driven hundreds of miles every week to weekend toys that get a few hundred miles a year put on them to full on race only cars- and with very few exceptions, they live a long and trouble free life if properly installed. aluminum roller rocker arms have a 50 year track record of success, regardless of what the engineering books say.
if you don't want to use them- fine. your car, your money, your choice. do what you want. but it works for others just fine.
this is like saying that there is no way you can run an 11:1 327 with a big solid tappet cam and a single plane intake topped with a 750 double pumper on pump gas on the street in a 3500 pound car with 3.73 gears and an auto with a stock stall converter. on paper, it might not work out all that well- but it has been done many, many times with varying degrees of success.

 

[langss]

Not interested in arguing about it in those terms."Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance".Anyone with aircraft experience will know INSTANTLY what the problem with an aluminum moving part is.I've seen ALOT LOT LOT more than 6 - 10 sets of aluminum rockers, of all brands types colors and ages, fail in THE EXACT SAME WAY, on the street. Which, any aircraft guy will be familiar with what that way is.Namely, they work GREAT, perfectly fine, for months or years; then suddenly one day, with no kind of warning whatsoever, one of them just breaks in half somewhere (usually out near the tip, but soetimes the trunnion breaks in half), out of the clear blue. At least one of those sets in my experience got parked one night running perfectly, and when the owner cranked it up the next morning to go to work, it had a dead miss and popped back through the carb. Guess what.Aluminum suffers from "fatigue" failure. It does not crack or otherwise show that a failure is about to happen. This is why the FAA madates that certain stressed parts in aircraft be replaced every x years, or y thousand hours (or y hundred hours of operation in a helicopter), or z landings. No inspection and approval, no exceptions, no excuses, no alternatives. Throw away and replace. You cannot tell, by looking, whether that part will go one more, or 5 more, or 500 more, units of wear; you just know, it's no good any more. It's used up and you're taking your life, and the lives of your passengers, in your hands, if you continue to use it.Furthermore, it is a statistical matter, not a hard-and-fast "you get 12,731.8 miles if you run 221 lbs on the seat and 487 lbs open and only run it to 7,168 RPM 2 times and 7,094 RPM 3 times". It's more like, if you put a thousand sets of aluminum rockers into 1000 random cars, you'd get a pattern something like 10% would die by 10,000 miles (probably not the fault of the rockers), 20% would die by 20,000 miles, 80% would die by 30,000 miles, and 99.9% would die by 40,000 miles. Not necesarily those exact numbers, but a similar pattern, with different absolute values. If you graphed it, it would look sort of like falling off a cliff: and the easiest way to determine where the edge of that cliff is, would be to count the number of stress-relief cycles. Not the amount of the stress, but rather, how many times the stress on the part cycled from zero to peak and back.Moving parts should be steel for the street. Racing and street usage put an entirely different pattern of stresses on parts; just because a particular kind of part is good for the one, does not qualify it for the other. Richmond drag racing gears are a great example: they'll last 10 times as long as street gears in a racing application, but street gears will alst 10 times as long in a street application. It's not about "quality", it's about "suitability for purpose".

Since I am Licensed Aircraft Mechanic,I agree with what you have posted above and to add that Aircraft Airframes are Xrayed on a regular basis to preclude the failure that is a possiablity and has happened to many different types of Aircraft over the years.The reason is Fatigue.Back in the late 60's early 70's Aluminum Retainers were all the rage.And I'm sure some of you older guys can remember the valve keepers pulling through the retainer and the carnage that followed.I think Aluminum retainers are great and look cool as hell,but like anything else they have their place.Just my.02.

 

[cwilks]

Well.....it ended up being between the Comp Cams Pro Magnums OR the Crane Golds.....got a brand new set of Pro's for $227....done deal....thanks for the posts :thumbsup: