My first post to the board however; I have been reading posts on this site for about 6 months now, great site with excellent information. I have been a Pontiac GTO guy for a long time and still will be but recently bought my first real Chevy, a 69 Pro Street Camaro. My issue: I have been told that the reliability of Comp roller cams in BBC’s have not been good. 5 separate incidents of failures in the last 2 years locally. It was suggested to me to go with Crower as many of the guys have had no failures with Crower.

My concern is that I have a BBC with a Comp roller cam part # 11-717-9, .714 lift, the engine has been dyno’d at over 670HP and now has less than 150 street driven miles on it. The engine runs perfect, no problems. Should I change the cam? I have searched previous posts but nothing so far convinced me. I am looking for other opinions based on actual experiences with roller cam failures. I do trust the advice of the person that advised me to change the cam as he has had lots of racing experience.

Thanks in advance.

the problem with roller cams on the street is that the roller isnt lubricated properly and can sieze up and ruin the cam lobe. the newer roller lifters have a number of small groves in them to allow oil to flow from the lifter down onto the roller. i believe the new comp cams lifters have this feature, aswell as cranes endure-x lifters, that are also intendet for extended low rpm driving (as cruicing is), where the oil splash in the crank case isnt sufficient to lube the lifters.

so dont change the cam, just be sure that you are running lifters that are designed to ron on the street also