Caught a lifter not rotating before cam failure

[92b]

I speculate 80% of the lifters on the market are garbage. The last two hydraulic cams were Howard’s lifters on a purple shaft and Melling lifters on a delta regrind.The lifters I purchased from Delta (melling) appear to have been refaced, even though the body appeared to be new.

80% of lifters or 80% of lifter sets ( having at least one bad lifter out of a set of 16)? Is a lifter bad if you move it from a hole where it doesn't spin to a hole where it does spin? And what does it say if you have one that doesn't spin and swap it with one that does spin resulting in both lifters spinning?

 

[Illahe]

How could you tell they had been refaced?

There were swirling machine marks on the face of the lifters.

 

[Illahe]

80% of lifters or 80% of lifter sets ( having at least one bad lifter out of a set of 16)? Is a lifter bad if you move it from a hole where it doesn't spin to a hole where it does spin? And what does it say if you have one that doesn't spin and swap it with one that does spin resulting in both lifters spinning?

Lifter “brands” (sets) on the market. Kevin at Schneider cam told me not to run a cam with less than .004 lobe taper.

I’m hoping the Sealed Powers are “Old Johnson Lifters.”

I never put Hydrolic lifters on an aggressive cam and I only run a hydraulic in a pick up truck. Anything mildly performance and up gets a solid flat tappet.

 

[Oldmanmopar]

Put those lifters in another bore and see what the marker method shows. Could be the engine needs the lifter bores bushed and trued.

 

[440 Mike]

I swear, if someone decided to market a solid roller cam while adapting the old MP .509 specs they'd make a fortune.

 

[440 Mike]

When you assembled the engine to begin with did you insert the lifters in the bores (no gooey assembly lube, or excessive oil), Maybe a little wd40 or something if you feel inclined to use lube at all, and rotate the cam by hand to see if they turned the lifters before final assembly?

Some times you have to switch them around to ensure they all rotate. Then on final assembly lube them all up with driven or cam lube etc and giver!

I did this on my last flat tappet break-in. Mark the lifters with a sharpie and roll the cam with light oil. Can't really think of a good lifter rotation check with the valve springs in play without wiping off the cam lube though.

True story - I bought 20 lifters from Hughes on my last build. Two were ever so slightly oversized in diameter and wouldn't drop/slide easily into any of the lifter bores. The rest were fine.

 

[NC Engine Builder]

Who ground the camshaft? Lack of lobe taper has been as issue with @#%* cams.

That's almost NEVER the cause in my experience, and I do this every day. In my experience 99.9% of the time, its incorrect machining on the lifter face. I have the equipment to remachine lifters in my shop, and I will not install ANY lifter that I dont remachine first. In the past year alone I have probably done over a 1000 of them for customers. It's not the oil, it's not the lifter bore, it's not lobe taper. It's not break in teqnique, Its lifter face machining, almost allways.

 

[Illahe]

That's almost NEVER the cause in my experience, and I do this every day. In my experience 99.9% of the time, its incorrect machining on the lifter face. I have the equipment to remachine lifters in my shop, and I will not install ANY lifter that I dont remachine first. In the past year alone I have probably done over a 1000 of them for customers. It's not the oil, it's not the lifter bore, it's not lobe taper. It's not break in teqnique, Its lifter face machining, almost allways.

This: "I will not install ANY lifter that I dont remachine first."

Your experience, by volume alone gives a greater probability of being accurate.

I mistook this for another thread. My apologies.

 

[Oldmanmopar]

I swear, if someone decided to market a solid roller cam while adapting the old MP .509 specs they'd make a fortune.

My son found a solid roller equivalent for my street engine.

 

[a70duster]

All right! Thanks to all that have contributed. There is a lot of great info here. There is a recipe here for how to sucessfully check lifter rotation BEFORE the cam break-in procedure.

For over 60 years there was a process that worked for over 98% of the cam break-ins. Now it's a flip of a coin for sucess when using the older process.

I caught the first moments of a lifter just starting to fail. This "new" process of checking lifter rotation is easy enough to perform. The process of how to check this needs to hit the masses.