Weird thread and only one page in.

O.P. There are pro’s and con’s with either method.
Hydraulics are the quietest.
Hydraulics are in this day and age much more common
Hydraulics allow a little bleed off at start up and low rpm
Hydraulics with some engine recipes may offer slightly more torque down low.

Solids are easier to install
Solids offer slightly more high rpm performance (weight, set where you want, more consistent)
Solids possibly have longer life
Solid allow you to “play” with duration a bit when experimenting with cam selection

All that said… run hydraulics. You probably already have that now. You need specific cams to run solids as well. Some/most cams are one or the other.

 

Street driven shovel shifted above 6K here. Every shovel I ever built for myself got solids. Lots of Solids and performance shovels that made exceptional power.

Getting off track a bit but fun to share.. here are some super secrete hot Rod shovel tips from good ole Rains2much that are lost to the young.
‘Find the old sifton solid adjustable lifters and blocks… they place the push rod angle lower into the lifter side allowing for less potential issues at greater rpm
Use the longest lightest aluminum push rods over the usually suggested chromolly ones.. they are lighter and will give more when something goes wrong. Don’t use ANY shims for your rocker arms.. let there be lots of slop (sorry Baisley, we tried it your way and only emptied our wallets) that’s right let those rockers end play be loose. DON’T EVER USE WAIVY SHIMS…EVER. You can lighten your rocker a lot if you know where, and smooth them out. This helps with rpm. Use the “just right” spring pressure. Don’t over do it, you want it to rev fast, just enough to close that valve and keep it closed. To know if a cam with less lift/duration would help or hurt in power on the quarter you can temporarily adjust the intake or exhaust with more or less slop to point you in the right direction for a cam. There are lots of tricks..

Any street HotRod shovel needs compression and ole school obnoxious big cams to make power. Andrew’s M grind, Sifton 119, EV81.. inch for inch, built right a Shovel and an Evo make the same power up to 103” after that your done with the shovel the heads can’t give more cubes what they need past that much.

There were legends back in the day that nobody talks about.. Guys like Mike Megaro.. He ran a street ridden, kick start shovel that looked stock with a 130 street tire in a 77 FXE and was in the 10.50’s at the quarter… Shovels could hold their own. These days they’re scarce, been through thousands of heat cycles… the survivors pretty much need to be left to just run and be gentle. But the potential was always there.

 

Education time, Hydraulic lifters are quieter, solids lose lift as the engine grows as it gets up to running temp. A shovel engine expands upward. 050" or more when hot, that's how much the solids loosen up to rattle and beat the **** out of the whole drive train. Daily rider you want hyd, it's stop light hot rod, run solids.

And do yourself a huge favor, ignore anything that idiot Jackie Paper says, he only knows what he read on the net somewhere, he's never touched a shovel in his life.

 

Best tip of the year!!!

 

Oh...I dunno...seemed genuinely concerned about my Hangover.. I kinda was..and he actually made me feel better!!!

 

One of the very few things he has actual experience with is the drunk part.

 

ok I goofed on this post I meant pushrods solid or adjustable know some mechanics will use only solid push rods over the adjustable

 

I've run hydraulic and solids in Shovels. Solids are much easier to adjust, but they are noisy when the engine warms up. Hydraulics can wear out and not keep the slack out of the valve train.

The biggest problem I've seen with the soilids is the valve and rocker arm tip will wear from being hammered (like @Rains2much said) from the slack when the engine warms up. Instead of a smooth motion of pushing the valve open, the lash allows the rocker to contact the valve tip with force because it's moving quickly before making contact, like hammering a nail. Every Shovel top end I've rebuilt that run solids for any amount of time, the rocker arm contact pad for the valve was pitted enough that they needed to be resurfaced or replaced. The valves didn't matter because they were usually replaced along with the guides.

Paul

 

no actually
"tappets" or "lifters"
but glad youre trying

 

I have these long silver things in my tool box that was replaced by some long things that screw up and down to adjust so what are they called?