Breathing new life into the 318 in the Scamp!

What would you do? ...

As I am getting ready to put the top end back together, I'm putting lifters back in, on the 8th lifter back on the cam, I noticed that the lifter itself has the beginning of a linear pattern worn into it.



That would be Cyl #4, exhaust... Yeah, this engine f-ckin' loves being worked on and I'm really glad that I went back through everything.

I checked the old cam that came out, before the entire block was tanked and machined, and it's not on one of the lifter bores that had a flattened lobe, on the original cam. In fact, this is the only lifter that has any strange pattern in it, at all. The other lifters, including the ones that went back into the bores that had completely obliterated lifters and lobes, according to the old cam, look awesome.

The surface looks like the coating took to the lifter surface linearly with some pressure stretching in the center and a linear groove going horizontally that matches the peak of the cam lobe that is brighter than the coating, slightly deeper than the rest. No scratching, it's pretty smooth, but without measuring, I'd say the horizontal burnished wear mark is about .005-.007" deep.

I don't know how the cam lobe looks yet, but I'm going to have to mic it and remove the cam, to get a good idea.

As I inspect this lifter, there appears to be a poor material manufacturing issue. It looks like the material that the lifter was machined from, had a deposit or contaminant in the casting that ended up making two small craters that have a little connection between them, in it, that happened to be caught right in the machine surface.

It's sort of blurry, but you can see it in the reflection-



So, I'm going to call Hughes and see what I can get from them. Now, if the lobe looks or measures up total ****, I've clearly got no choice, but if the cam lobe still has enough coating and doesn't mic out stupid, for all intensive purposes, looks good enough, do you think a new lifter will survive with some high metal cam lube on the entire lobe and lifter face?

If I've got no choice and the cam has to come out, regardless of what Hughes says, whether or not it's on them that I've got a replacement cam issue on my hands, what would you do-

1- Get another 1019AL from Hughes and scope the daylights out of the new lifter set, break it in and call it a day.

2- Get an equivalent Howards set and ask for a refund from Hughes.

3- To hell with all of this, I'm going hydraulic roller.