lookin to upgrade to roller rockers.

question is, whats better, hydraulic, or mechanical? aluminum or steel?

as a guess i would think hydraulic aluminum. Any thoughts on good names?

im up to ANY AND ALL info on this subject as i am somewhat ignorant to it.

also, when i do this im gona have the cam out and raplace it. thoughts and ideas?im not lookin for extreme, but a little bit on the heavy side of mild. get what im sayin?

 

As far as I know, you can only get hydraulic rockers in some overhead cam engines. I think you are confusing roller lifters and roller rockers. Also, rockers come with roller tips, roller trunnions, both roller tips and trunnions, stud mounted, shaft mounted, stamped steel with no rollers, stamped steel with roller tips, aluminum construction, steel construction. There is also a choice of ratios.
Personally, I prefer steel roller rockers for street use as there is less of chance for breakage due to fatigue. For racing, they all do good, unless you have a really wild cam, in which case you may want to consider shaft monted rockers, such as Jesel or the new Crane Quick Lift, both come at a stiff price.

 

see what i mean...

so im not gona be able to get roller rockers on this thing right? what about the lifters?

 

You can get roller rockers, but not hydraulic rockers, and you can get both solid and hydraulic lifters. Solid lifters require a lot of maintenance and normally used in high revving engines. They can be used on a street engine but offer no advantage over hydraulic lifters. It depends on what you want to accomplish.

 

You can get a stamped steel or aluminum roller tip rocker. I think full rollers need screw in studs. You can also get a higher ratio rocker. Stock is 1.5:1. You could get 1.6:1 which would change the lift through the cams duration. It would be like installing a higher lift cam.
You also got to look into rockers to properly replace yours. In 88 GM went to a rail guided rocker and I dont know if just any roller rocker will replace them. Some rockers may requir guide plates

 

im just gona have to pop the covers off of this thing. its a crate engine and i dont know what it has for rockers at all, it may already have them. so ill look into it for sure. thanks for the advice