When I was young and broke, I would put used lifters on a new cam. Never lost a cam. No break in either. Start and idle then go. What the hell has changed so much.
We will likely never know the accurate answer to that question. I just went through the problem and I still cannot nail it down, exactly. This time, I did it all by the book. ZDDP paste, rotated the cam by hand to assure the lifters rotated in their bores, the whole bit. It seems to have turned out good.
The only thing I did this time that I did not last time was, I had the new lifters refaced by
@NC Engine Builder Sean. I did not do that with the new Summit cam and lifters last time and had a failure. Everything else was done the same. Was it the fact that I did not have the new Summit lifters refaced? Who's to say? That is the only thing that was different, other than the fact that Summit cams and lifters are now made in China and the cam I used this time is an older Crane Fireball from the 1980s.
Although three years ago, it was NOS, now it has three years worth of run time on it, although minimal mileage in that time. Under 5K I am sure. Also of note is the fact that now this Crane cam has successfully broken in THREE sets of lifters on top of it. The original set three years ago failed, because when hot, they sounded like solid lifters. They were Crower Cam Saver lifters. After some reading, it appears in some applications, they bleed down too quickly and cause noise. So out they came after about a week. I then put in a new set of Melling lifters and drive the truck until it lost oil pressure back in February.
Once the engine was cleaned up and reassembled, I decided to go with a new cam and lifters from Summit, because one or two of the Melling lifters on the Crane cam looked what I can only describe as "suspect" for not rotating. Although their faces were still convex, they had a straight across witness mark, as if they hadn't rotated. The Crane cam however, looked pristine.
The cam replacement proved to be a mistake and the Summit cam and lifters very quickly failed. I had valve train noise within the first hour of running and a filter full of metal filings. So the engine came back down, cleaned again and here we are now with the old used Crane Fireball back in, with the new refaced lifters on top of it.
I will say this with 100% certainty. I believe the Summit cam and lifters 100% failed due to being a poor, inferior product. Period. Whether it was because the lifters were not finished properly, bad metallurgy, I am convinced that it was indeed a parts failure whether through poor machine finishing, poor metallurgy or both.
