I think mine look better than yours Rus. Too bad nobody can see them.
BTW Chris, these are the same RRs you were thinking of getting. But unless ya find some place that still has them in stock, I read that Crane Cam closed shop today. Rus' are very good RRs too. I tried to track down the site that compared about 40 different RRs, but couldn't find it. It was a ricer site, and for whatever engine it was, used the same RRs as the LT1, except it was a 4 banger, so the guy writing the page recommended finding someone to go halves on a set of RRs. LOL Anyways, he rated Crane Cams Gold Race ones at the top of the list. Basically saying that you get what you pay for. I think they ranked CompCams', which Rusty mentioned above, as the 2nd best (all the higher end ones were pretty close). Performance-wise, Crane Cams advertised 25-30 extra HP for the LT1. Gained from friction reduction and extra lift. But that really depends on what else has been mod'd.
I also wanted to throw my 2 cents in here about studs and NSAs too. Living in California, with its ridiculous smog laws, I know that there isn't much more I can do to my car and keep it street legal. Hell, I have to change out the stat and reprogram the PCM just to pass smog the way it is right now. So based on that, I knew I wasn't going to be increasing my horsepower much more than it is at right now. And also, being on a tight budget, these RRs and the Crane Cam valve springs were the only 2 upgrades I did during my head gasket replacement. Which was something I wasn't sure I would be able to do considering I have never done any engine work before in my life. So I thought there was a chance my car might end up in the junk yard.
Anyways, the point I am getting at is if you are on a tight budget, what are your future plans for the car? Upgrading the studs and using NSA rockers is the way to go. But, if you are going to keep the engine under 450-500 HP, then there really isn't need to do those upgrades. But if you decide to do them later, then it'll cost you another set of RRs.
As for installation time, from the pic above, I obviously did mine during the head gasket replacement. But if ya check out my posts from about 5 months ago, I ended up breaking a rod due to a misadjusted RR. So I took them all off and put them all back on again. I would say that if I really didn't waste any time, I could replace them and have them properly adjusted in under 2 hours. But, being on the safe side, especially if you hadn't just taken half the engine apart recently, it would probably take about 4 hours. One of the reasons for the extra time is that you need to take a bunch of stuff off to get the valve covers off, then put it back on, without the valve covers, so you can adjust the RRs while the engine is idling. And I HIGHLY recommend that you adjust the RRs using the engine idling method. Use which ever method you want to initially install them, but once you see them idling using an "engine off" method, you quickly see how poorly they were adjusted. I got to experience this twice and was really amazed. I ended up adjusting each rocker at least 3 times using the idling method because the engine is loud, and it is hard to tell which rocker is making noise. After the first pass, I was amazed at how much quieter it was. The 2nd pass was amazing too. And by the third pass, it got pretty easy to tell which rocker wasn't adjusted right. Then once you got them adjusted correctly, you have to take a bunch of stuff off to get the valve covers back on... the alternator being one of the parts. Because of various issues, like the wires being the exact length so you have to plug them in before mounting, I ended up taking off and putting my alternator on at least a dozen times. Argh, but I could do it in my sleep now.
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Anyways, good luck with your RRs.
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