Crane has been working the...
Crane has been working the hydraulic roller side of the street too. Introducing its Ultra-Pro Hydraulic Roller Lifter. The rollers use an 8620 steel billet body like their mechanical brethren, which is then machined, heat-treated, micro-ground, component-matched, and leakdown tested. The roller wheel/bearing/axle assembly is designed to handle greater load carrying over a long life cycle. The Ultra-Pro Hydraulics are meant for use in high-rpm, high-spring-pressure applications.
Another cool piece Knight clued us into is Crane's new Pro Series L92/LS3 stud-mount rocker arm kit. Right off the bat, it comes as a complete kit with rocker arms, screw-in studs, polylocks, pushrod guides, and even pushrods to enhance valvetrain stability. They come in 1.7 and 1.8 versions, of course, and use special tapered needle bearings in the fulcrum area for quietness and longevity, and also employ Quick Lift Technology. According to Crane, this rocker body design increases duration at 0.200-inch lift (read: more power) but maintains the advertised seat-to-seat valve timing figures for ease of tuning.
Another area Crane has seen a lot of interest in is firing swap cams in traditional small- and big-blocks. "They're finding their way into our regular lineup," says Knight. "We've got the 4-7 swap (Special Firing Order) as well as the 4-7/2-3 swap-the same order as an as LS1." That one's called the SFO1 cam. "It depends on the intake, manifold, and carb," Knight told us. The SFO works well with a multicarb setup, while the SFO1 works better with single-plane manifolds.
Other than that, what Crane does is cater to customer needs. "We just about run a WWII interrogation to find out their specific uses," Knight quipped. "Different profiles, specialization, lobe lift, opening/closing ramps, powerband, tight lash cams.... We cater to customer needs, and we're constantly expanding. We've got lots of stuff going...street stuff, race stuff. We're constantly coming up with new cams."
We're sure it will come as no surprise that Crane has also significantly expanded its line of cams for Gen III and IV engines, with no fewer than three lineups: the Street/Strip Series, which is aimed right at the crowd it's named for; the LS Series Big Inch-Wide Separation Angle for big-cube LS motors; and the LS7 Series Hydraulic Roller Series, which is designed for the extreme airflow needs of that particular engine. All of them utilize Crane's Rapid Ramp lobe design and are gun-drilled for weight reduction.