who to trust for hydraulic flat lifters these days?

Look up Powell Machine on
You Tube. He has some vids about poor quality lifters.
I saw one of his videos a while back, where he said they had stopped regrinding cams and resurfacing lifters. The whole flat tappet cam and lifter debacle was taking so much shop time that they weren't keeping up with their other work like they needed to. I've heard they are a good shop. Especially to be in Iva, SC. That's barely a wide place in the road!