Lifter Not Pumping Up

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Zelus

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Ridgecrest, CA
A while ago, I corrected the preload on one of my lifters to remove a slapping sound coming from cylinder 6. Having had great success, I decided it might be good to correct the preload on all of the cylinders, since the valvetrain seemed a little noisy overall... Not my best idea.

Unfortunately, I followed the first method I found (spin pushrod, tighten until it resists, add another half-turn) which resulted in severe over-preloading. The engine wouldn't idle correctly, and I wasn't liking the noises it was making; I shut it off quickly, less than 3 minutes.

I backed everything off today, and tried another method, (tug pushrod up-and-down, tighten until it stops, add additional half-turn). This time, with a lot more patience.

Now, cylinder's 3's intake lifter doesn't seem to pump-up. I can easily compress it by hand, even after running for a couple of minutes. The slapping is awful, and I've been worried about running it too long in this condition, so a couple of minutes is all it has ran.

Is it likely I blew the lifter with the over-tightening? Or could it simply be stuck due to the transition from valve-always-open compressed to proper preload? I read somewhere about running the engine until it warmed, then 'shocking' the lifter with quick bursts of high-revs to unstick it... sounds like a bad idea.

The lifters themselves are Lunati's, about 3 years old, with about 10k-15k miles on them. If anything, they've been slightly underloaded for most of their life, in an engine that has seen over 4k RPM maybe 10 times in its rebuilt lifetime, and never over 5k RPM.

Thank you.

EDIT: I'll also note that the car has been sitting for a couple of weeks, at an incline. When I first adjusted the lifters, I noticed that the forward four cylinders where all much squishier than the rear four cylinders.
 
340, bored 40 over.
J-heads, punched to match X-head valves, and deck lowered to bring static compression up to about 10:1. Ported and polished.
KB hypereutectics.
Lunati 60403 hydraulic flat-tappet camshaft with matching lifter kit.
Set of very old mopar adjustable rockers, clearenced for reasons I still don't quite understand (long pushrods?).
The valve springs appear to be the recommended 1.44 diameter with 1.85 height, 200 lbs at 1/2 inch compressed.
Forged crank probably on its last grind, 40 on the journals, 30 on the mains.
 
Forged cranks never die, they just get welded up! You can dissect a lifter with a snap ring plier. maybe you got some trash in there. Lunati didn't make lifters....if you can put the lifter in a can under oil and use a pushrod to cycle it up and down a few times, it should pump rock hard in a few cycles. If not, take it apart and clean it.
 
If it comes down to pulling the intake manifold to get to the lifter, I'm just going to replace the set... possibly the entire valve train.

What I would like to know is, should I warm the car up, letting run for several minutes, to see if the lifter unsticks? Or does that risk damage? I've been too afraid of the clatter to allow it to run like that for more than the couple minutes I have, so it's gotten no where near running temperature.

Today I observed that more lifters than just the #3 intake are squishy; it seems about 6 of them are, to varying degrees, though none as severe as #3 intake. It's entirely the forward lifters too; the ones that haven't been bathed in oil for the last couple of weeks while it's been sitting.

Admittedly, I cheaped out on my oil filter... it's a fram. I'm afraid this might be part of the problem: bad oil. However the oil and filter were changed less than 3k miles ago, about 15 months.

My other fear is that my oil pressure is poor. The pump is old, of unknown origin, and I only have an idiot-light to tell me what the pressure is.
 
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