Roller Cam and Followers

It may not seem to make any sense, but if you put the camshaft from an 88 throttle body injected car (ie. Aries, Reliant) into your turbo 2.2, you can realize some performance gains! At the same time, getting out of the slider cam followers and into the rollers results in a LARGE reduction of top end friction. Any internal engine friction that you remove translates into more power to move the car, so this is a good thing.

Be aware: You can ONLY use the roller followers with a roller cam. You can't just replace the followers or the cam on their own. Well, actually, you can (they'll fit), but there will be unintended side effects (breakage) since they are designed to work together.

Just remove the old cam and followers, drop the new ones in, and button it up. That's all you have to do.

These are the roller followers. They came from an otherwise dirty, ugly 1988 Plymouth Reliant 4 door. A shot of Castrol Super Clean removed the slight varnish, and they look like brand new! Make sure the rollers all move freely, of the 16 followers I got, two had bad bearings. For comparison, one of the horrible looking slider followers is in the background. Also, in the bag are the new cam end seals.

Valve cover just removed, showing the slider followers.

The roller followers lined up and ready to go. Note that these just rest in place, they can't move once the camshaft is installed. You don't need to do anything unusual to change followers.

And here it is ready for the valve cover to go back on. The most time consuming parts of the entire process were resetting the timing and cleaning the sealant off the valve cover!

So, did doing this make tons more power in my car? No. BUT: The total cost in parts was about $30, the idle is FAR smoother and quieter, I get about 2" more vacuum at idle, there is less valvetrain noise in general, and there was SOME increase in power. So it's completely worth the effort.