LS1TECH - Camaro and Firebird Forum Discussion - What's a Torrington bearing?

In a camshaft drive, "Torrington bearing" usually refers to a roller thrust bearing used in place of a flat hardened steel or bronze thrust washer, or no thrust washer at all.

The Torrington radial roller thrust bearing has lots of litle (about 1/16 inch diameter) needle rollers arranged radially (like wheel spokes) in a cage. It goes between the cam sprocket and the block to take the thrust loads (in/out along the cam axis). The inside diameter fits over the cam journal (about 2 inches). It can take lots of load with very little friction, and needs very little oil.

Thrust loads with flat lifters are almost always push the cam into the block (toward the rear) because the cam lobes are ground with a slight taper which causes to lifter to rotate to help even out wear on the lifter face.

On roller lifters, the lobes are not intentionally tapered, so thrust loads can be in both directions, just due to less than perfect alignment of lifter bores, lifters and cam lobes. Here you usually have some sort of "thrust button" to take the thrust loads pushing the cam out of the block, as well as the thrust bearing to take the inward loads.

Torrington, the company produces millions of bearings for almost any application. Perhaps they originally marketed the needle roller thrust bearing, so the company name stuck (sorta like Kleenex).

I believe the stock LS1 has the cam sprocket running against the (steel?)cam retainer plate.
If I were building a higher output engine, and had the opportunity to use a needle roller thrust bearing ("Torrington") I'd use it. Probably can't hurt, and it might help.

My $.02