Reply to "Has anyone ever made a "Boss 351" pantera?"

Michael & DeTom,

The Crane lifters are the hot tip! Expensive, but choice quality stuff. For the budget concious, Competition Cams runs Ford type hydraulic lifters, which can be found at the wrecking yard, or purchased on e-bay at reasonable prices.

Now DeTom, a roller cam installation goes like this. The cam has higher valve lift & more agressive ramps, plus it is machined out of billet steel. The iron distributor gear won't like the billet steel gear it meshes with on the cam, so the distributor drive gear must be replaced with a steel gear. (Competition Cams uses iron cores for its hydraulic roller cams) The agressive, high lift lobes of the cam require stiffer valve springs. Those stiffer valve springs require beefier spring retainers & locks, plus single groove, one piece stainless steel valves. The stiffer springs & higher valve lifts will also wear and or break your stock rocker arms, so you'll need to spring for a set of "good" (not inexpensive) roller rocker arms. Finally, those springs will flex the stock size 5/16" push rods, so you'll need to run 3/8" push rods.

In other words, the valve train is an engineered system, you can't agressively hot rod just one part of it, you must upgrade the entire system.

Or, as I always tell my friends, speed cost money, how fast do you want to go?

Your friend on the PIBB, George