Are stud girdles legal in Stock?

[Ed Fernandez]

Originally Posted by Alan Roehrich

No stud girdles. Aftermarket studs, poly locks, guide plates, and pushrods are allowed.

Without stud girdles, if they allowed full roller rockers in stock, the first thing that would happen would be a lot of engines with stud mounted rockers would start breaking rocker studs.

In most cases, where the old school style rockers are used, the rocker arm is the "fuse" or the "weak link". Changing to aftermarket roller rockers will merely change what part breaks first. Then the people breaking that part will demand aftermarket versions of that part be allowed, or some sort of device designed to prevent breakage be allowed.

Yeah, I'm one of those guys, who thinks Stock Eliminator has already moved too far toward Super Stock.

Alan,not disputing what you say but in my original gremlin i ran a 390 with 7/16"studs,crane rollers w/poly loks,guide plates with a .510 lift cam.Granted the duration wasn't very aggressive at .232 @.50.I put over 3600 runs on that engine
with two puff ups and new pistons once.Shifted at 6000 rpm.I never broke a valve train part in all that time.Colud the aggressive cams we run be the culprit?
BTW the car ran as fast as 11.20 122mph.Tight converter I'de say.

[Alan Roehrich]

Ed, no doubt it is the new camshafts, every year they figure out how to make a lobe more aggressive. And every year, we buy better valve springs.

What I said about rocker studs goes back maybe 35 years or so, it's in the old Chevrolet Power manual. They talk about rocker stud failures escalating almost as soon as people started putting roller rockers on.

When you think about it, we run cams in Super Stock now that are more aggressive than Pro Stock cars run not that long ago. We're running roller cam valve springs on flat tappet cams now because the flat tappet cam valve springs won't live, and don't have enough spring rate.

As one of my friends who has been racing 50 years said not long ago, "we ought to take all these new parts and ported heads they told us to run and find the guy who allowed them in, and stick 'em where the sun don't shine". This from a guy who makes a good living, and runs a real nice real fast Super Stock car, from porting heads and building engines.