When it comes to the lifters in your LS you’ve got a lot of options. And while there are a lot of capable parts out there, Isky Cams has officially set themselves apart as one of the premier provides of LS lifters with their new HPx EZ-Roll bushing style lifters which can handle up to 200 pounds of pressure on the seat before being pushed to their brink—far beyond what other traditional type lifters are capable of handling.

The question of whether, or rather when, to switch over to a mechanical (or solid) lifter is a question almost as old as time itself—OK maybe not that old, but you get the point. As you probably well know, running a mechanical lifter has its pros and definitely cons. While a solid lifter will let you rev higher and, in general, provides more stability in the valvetrain, they can be noisy, require frequent adjustment, and require machining on most LS engines.

That’s why hydraulic lifters have been the choice for most OEs on everything, but the most performance-oriented engines for well over 50 years. And while technology in many other areas has advanced dramatically over the years, lifters have been relatively unchanged, at least until now. In this case, Isky has gone back to the drawing board.

“We had an engine builder come to us and tell us that he kept ruining lifters and was looking for a hydraulic lifter that could handle what he was doing with it,” said Nolan Jamora, the director of research and development at Isky Cams. “We started looking at them, and the machining inside the originals was not to tolerance all the way down, so what happens is they just collapse because it has too much space where the plunger is and the needles were bouncing around and blowing up. Because of this, all the bodies on our new lifters are precision ground and have a different mechanical inner, so now they will support up to 550 open pounds of pressure and 200 on the seat, which is unheard of for a hydraulic lifter.”

The lifters are short travel but have been shown not to cause the problems typically associated with running high valve seat loads such as valvetrain shock and lifter pump up. This also allows for a much more aggressive ramp rate on the cam lobe, which equals horsepower.

While the lifters are available in both standard and EZ-Roll versions, Jamora tells us that the more popular EZ-Roll variant could prevent a lot of damage down the line since it has no needle bearings in the roller to scatter and ruin other parts in the engine. They are also known to last longer (up to 5X longer than needle bearings), provide more horsepower, and stand up to greater pressures.

The bushing lifters provide what Isky likes to call their “Bigfoot Effect” which means that the load distribution footprint for the lifter is increased by 350 percent, making it ideal in applications that would have otherwise over stressed a needle-bearing lifter.

So, if you want to stick with hydraulic lifters but refuse to sacrifice anything in the way of performance, Isky’s HPx EZ-Roller lifters may just be worth a look.