Roller Rockers in Stock Elim?

[Alan Roehrich]

Pandora's Box has been opened, and the genie has been let out of the bottle. You'll never get what came out of the box back in, and you'll do good to get the genie back in the bottle. The BEST you can hope for is to reach some sort of plateau, and put up a fence to keep everyone from getting too close to the slippery slope.

(How about that for a full paragraph of cliches?)

Some of the racers, as well as NHRA, don't want to be bothered with an in depth tech inspection. So, the valve spring rule got opened up. Any valve spring so long as it is "stock appearing". Then the duration check was eliminated. Next thing you know, those valve springs pull the heads off of stock valves, so now you have one piece stainless valves (actually a good deal, saves the racer money in the long run). But then the killer valve springs combined with cheap cam cores and crappy motor oil starts killing lifters. So now you have ceramic foot lifters. Allowing a further escalation in valve spring pressure, and a serious increase in tappet velocity. Well, rocker arms were already breaking regularly, so the added load just pushed them further over the edge. Nothing in the valvetrain of a Stock Eliminator engine really resembles anything "stock" anymore.

The problem now is that roller rockers will cure the problem of rocker breakage, but ONLY the problem of rocker breakage. The next issue will be rocker stud breakage. There's a REASON they valve train people sell truck loads of shaft rocker conversions OR shaft rocker systems. Because studs break. Last year a lousy stud (actually it was a good ARP stud) broke and wiped out an entire engine for us. Allow roller rockers and the engines with shaft style
rockers gain a serious advantage again. Especially those with larger diameter lifters. Now, if you allow roller rockers and stud girdles (I doubt anyone will get NHRA to allow Jesel or T&D style conversions in Stock) that levels the field again, somewhat.

I doubt you'll ever get rid of killer valve springs and trick lifters. So maybe roller rockers and stud girdles are a reasonable concession in light of the other stuff that is there already, that will be there from now on.

I agree that the line needs to be drawn some where, and soon. However, realistically we cannot expect the line to be drawn back around 1990 and have everyone be forced to go back to there. Racers won't do it (at least most of them) and NHRA isn't going to do it, figuring it sells parts, and it's less tech for them.

It all comes down to being careful what you wish for.