cold feet about potential bad lifters

My take on the “benefit” of the solid lifter being less likely to fail as opposed to the hyd is what’s going on while the lifter is on the base circle of the cam.
With the solid there is clearance.
With the hyd the lifter has some preload and is wiping the oil off the cam.
Plus, there is the option with the solid of having an EDM’d hole in the bottom, direct feeding oil onto the cam instead of relying on splash.

However, imo the most common culprits for cam failures are poor lifter rotation(or none), and/or too much spring load for break in.
I’m also a big believer in using proper break in oil.

The other thing that no one talks about much is...... and this is particularly important when using a cam that’s designed to maximize the lifter diameter....... the actual usable footprint diameter of the lifter.
An aggressive chamfer on the bottom of the lifter cam easily reduce the usable footprint of a .904 lifter down into the .870-.880 range.
Even if it’s .890...... that reduction of diameter coupled with factory tolerances for lifter bore location and geometry, and frankly I’m surprised there aren’t more failures when using fast rate cams designed to use the full lifter diameter.