Have you seen this lifter damage?

[DaveMcLain]

I had a customer bring in a big Mopar engine one time and it wore a hole in the bottom of a hydraulic lifter in only about 20 minutes of running on the dyno. That was on a Mopar Performance "292" cam which is a pretty easy profile and it had about 130 and 300lbs spring loads. I took it apart, cleaned it out and broke in the new cam for an hour with a spring loads of about 75 and 230. No problems. I've heard that those blocks can be pretty bad when it comes to lifter bore machining accuracy and this customer's engine had experienced a previous cam failure and after I investigated it a little I found out that it was the same lobe! So far so good and that's been years ago.

[wyrmrider]

good call x2 check the lifter bores

[machinedave]

The manufacturer of the camshaft and lifter kit is going to examine the damage. I will report back on their findings.

[machinedave]

The cam manufacturer says they have never seen this damage to a lifter. They agreed to supply a new cam and lifters at no charge and even offered to upgrade to a roller cam and lifters. Now for the teardown and re cleaning of everything.

[wyrmrider]

let us know about the lifter bores
I use the BHJ and check all

[machinedave]

Motor now runs great and picked up 37 HP.

[1972ho]

Glad you got it ironed out and back in the saddle again,did the company say why it parted and did you take them up on the roller cam and lifters.

[user-612937456]

Excessive ware is one thing, but the big chips taken out of it! How does one explane that if the lifter was still in its bore?

That is what I am wondering too.

I would think the chipping came after it wore to the point that you had excessive clearance and lifters was bouncing on the cam. The chips would fall out of the bottom of the bore when lifters traveled above the cam and slammed back down on the cam. Just my thoughts.
reed

∆∆Agreed ∆∆

My knee jerk thoughts it's just a bad hardening process on the one lifter. Unless it had excessive lash going unnoticed progressivly getting worse after all this likely didn't happen during the last pass. Also could this be compounded by an agressive ramp profile?

[machinedave]

Glad you got it ironed out and back in the saddle again,did the company say why it parted and did you take them up on the roller cam and lifters.

They did not say why it happened. Yes it is now a roller cam and lifters.

[mag2555]

On the other side of the coin from what we have been thinking on this issue could that bottom area of the lifter have just been tempered too much and just been extremely brittle?

[machinedave]

On the other side of the coin from what we have been thinking on this issue could that bottom area of the lifter have just been tempered too much and just been extremely brittle?

That could explain the chipping.

[jsgarage]

machinedave » Tue Jan 03, 2017 4:43 pm
"The cam manufacturer says they have never seen this damage to a lifter. They agreed to supply a new cam and lifters at no charge and even offered to upgrade to a roller cam and lifters. Now for the teardown and re cleaning of everything".

I vote for excess hardening producing a brittle lifter base on the failed one in a complete set. Kudos to the cam/lifter mfgr for stepping up with replacement parts. Rare and uncommon in this day & age of bottom-line-driven businesses that deny responsibility for everything.

[machinedave]

Yes they were great. I was very impressed that they helped out and upgraded for him.