lifter problems (a new one)

[Turbo 6 Justin]

okay, this motor is kiling me. we tried for a week to get oil pressure and finally did, we went to do startup today and we ran it for the 30 minutes. things went well quite a bit of oil smoke but that was more from when it got stolen and they blew oil everywhere. Anyway, there was a noticable lifter tick especially at idle after the 30 minutes. anyway, pulled the valve covers and noticed that the drivers very rear rocker was not moving much at all an on the non lobe side of the cam the rocker was very loose, I mean it was really loose. checked the rocker assembly, the pushrods and everything checked out. Okay great we wiped a damn cam..... no that does not seam to be the case yet. We pulled the intake off and pulled the lifters and here is where it gets interesting. instead of the very slight crown on the lifter the drivers rear was indented at least .030" (kind of hard to measure) it looked like it was hit real hard but the rockers pushrods and rest of the valvetrain look great. ANY IDEA WHAT COULD CAUSE THIS? it is a 212/212 cam with comp lifters and I am leaning toward a manufacturing defect.

so now for more questions, if the cam is okay can we just throw a new lifter in and go from there? do we have to do the cam breakin again? should we replace all the lifters or just that one?

if the cam proves to be bad how much cleaning is there to do, the oil looked clean (there was cam and assembly lube in it but no noticable metal shavings) do we have to pull the motor and all the bearings, crank, pistons, and clean all the passages or is a few oil changes with a few (20-30 seconds enough to get pressure to the rockers) seconds of cranking with the new oil enough? Help me here!

sorry this got long winded I just wanted to give as much info as possible. let me know what you think.

 

[Chuck Leeper]

Lifter gone??

Sorry about the mess. What did you find was the cause of no oil press?? The constant cranking, no PSI, is most likely the cause of the lifter going away. The fact it looks like it was hit, believe me,IS NOT the case. The lifter is hardened and a hit hard enough to cave it in .030 would have taken out the rest of the system!! The failure is the loss of the cam lobe and the resultant failure of the lifter bottom.
DO NOT re start the engine until it has been thoroughly cleaned out, brgs checked and entire oiling system disassembled and cleaned, including the oil cooler. [BEST not even re-use it.]
A quik check for the degree of contamination is to cut the filter open, DO NOT use a saw. Cut it w/ a filter cutter or tin snips. Check in the pleats for metal. Then peel the pleated wrap open and look at the inside of the pleats. That should be free of ALL scrap metal, and if not, then the contamination got past the filter.

If the lifter that's destroyed is showing less lift at the lifter than the others, then that's the clear indicator the lobe is gone. The fact the bottom is caved in will not affect your measurements of lifter lift.

 

[Turbo 6 Justin]

as far as the oil pressure, it was a real dumb mistake, we forgot the two front freeze plugs that go behind the cam for the oil galley, it was bleading all the pressure right through to the valley pan. Stupid stupid Stupid, we were just not careful enough in assembly (that is after 3 days of measuring and fitting all the bearings, rings and bores) . But you think that the cam is definitly wiped?, I'll cut the filter open tomorrow I am just letting it sit overnight to drain a bit but I have got in the habit of opening all my filters up to see what's in there. okay so another hour to pull the front cover and cam out, no biggie. we did most of the oil tests with the drill on the oil pump but we also did a bit of cranking it with the starter and even did a 'dry start' for about 15 seconds and got no oil pressure. I am thinking this is probably what lead to the death of the parts. though we did relube the cam before the most recent start-up today.

thanks again for the help