But remember- you're giving advice to someone who basically has a stock motor....so maybe you should tailor your experience to be a little more specific to the OPs situation...and you do seem to have alot of good advice!

 

I didn’t mean to imply that anything I’m doing is smarter or better. I’m only offering the perspective of why I think it’s a good idea to change lifters often. Performance cams do create more ware. It’s at all different levels. Even in a stock motor J would change lifters at 20-30k. It’s cheaper than rebuilding the entire motor. I’m not saying folks can’t run stock lifters for a 100k I’m saying you’re gambling.

 

Yes. You can minimize with only using enough seat pressure and not going overboard. You can run lighter valve train stronger parts, you can spend a lot of time in set up and valve geometry, roller rockers… all of these practices help give extra life to your valve train.. but distilled down it’s always about compromise with performance.

 

Only failure Mode I ever witnessed on Evo Lifter, has been won't stay Pumped up.. you'll certainly Know when need replacement...Gonna Rattle Badly!! Now Shovelhead, or even Ironheads... Them little Rollers can cause Serious Damage!!

 

I’ve only ran solid vintage nos sifton in Shovels for many years now. I blew up velvatouches. I still have one set left brand new never installed of solid sifton. What I like about them even though they are solid is they are super short. With strokers and longer pushrods it makes the valve geometry way better with the push rod angles. It’s a secret weapon of intimidation when you’re in the left lane with solids, a 5” stroke and 12:1 compression.. a Bandit cam makes so much racket the guy in the right lane is terrified your bike will grenade. Sounds like a commercial size Folgers coffee can filled with bolts in a paint mixer. Lots of power. But you can see it on his face.. he’s thinking “dear God it’s gonna come apart.. this might be how I go” Then just smile to yourself as that hot dirty oily exhaust gas blows out your pipes with a slight angle so the air surrounds him.

 

Yes...But, I never played Head Games... Just be Fast enough to get the Job Done

 

my old FXR had a lifter bearing collapse and it trashed the cam !! so new set of lifters and an EV27 cam, lover the way the engine ran, more grunt low down and mid range, it also made it sound better. good cam.

 

lol.. I was small time racing street classes. Under 98” Stock cases and heads, DOT tire, no shift assist, no bars. In the end around 2003 there weren’t very many like me still. Most of who came to race street class were entered in 2-4 different classes with different bikes and endless money backed by teams. They’d show up with these ridiculous budget built bikes they “called” street. It was brutal to compete. The guys who helped each other were long gone. I couldn’t compete anymore. Life got me busy and I moved. Lots of years have gone by.. Being a Shovel among EVO and Twinkies left me an underdog. I used any advantage I could get.

 

Id ask why are you looking at swapping the 13 for a 27 if you like the way it pulls down low now? The 27 is a great cam and by no means would I say its "harder" on lifters than any other cam, but it does like the mid to higher RPMs and really needs compression at 10:1 and up to shine. Now if you already have bumped compression and like to ride in the upper RPMs, the 27 would be a nice change as it will pull clear to your rev limiter, plus the idle chop is better IMO haha.
Ive had a few FXRs that I kept the 80" in and my go to was always the 27, dome pistons, mikuni 42, and thunderheader. My first bagger was a twin cam in 06 and my preferred set up was a 10.5:1 95" with SE 211 cams, another set up that prefers the higher RPM because that fit my riding style. Yes they might be a little softer down low in the heavy bike but I didnt hangout below 2800 RPM much anyway.

Just be honest with yourself and how you ride and then decide what fits best.

 

Lifter issues were not present when I ran my EV27 for a couple of years although I did install Hylift Johnsons at the time of the cam install. When I inspected them during install of my EV13 they still looked like new. Like others have mentioned, id be more concerned about whether you will enjoy moving the power band further up the rev range. I like my harleys to have that low down muscle car grunt off the line, EV13 has that in spades.