I’ve been fighting lifters for a while. They were not pumping up. I determined that 10 were faulty and would not pump up what so ever and I never realized until I started it. The FE sounded like a train wreck inside. Ling story short I got 10 replacements ordered Well I finally got all my replacement lifters in and installed. I have an issue with one and I don’t know weather to worry or not. Here is the situation: I install the lifters. I prime the oil system up to 50 lbs. All of the lifters a rock hard. it sits for 15 minutes and I have one that’s a little soft. When I prime the system again it’s does the same trying. Gets rock solid and then bleeds off. The one with the issue is the front most one on the driver side (#1 cyl). same scenario: I put all lifters in and put pushrods and rockers on. Primed the engine up to 50lbs. With rockers torqued to spec. Turned the engine over by hand, oil pump is not being turned at this time. When the engine makes its revolution all the way around to bring cyl number 1 back to TDC from TDC the lifter looses its pressure. And is squishy. Granted this is without the pump turning. Anything sound fishy?
Any hydraulic lifter that is "up" on a cam lobe to any degree will eventually bleed down when the engine is not running, some just take longer than others. When the engine is running and there is oil being delivered to them they should pump back up and run quiet. The 10 faulty ones you mentioned, were they new lifters? You do know that you can dis***emble and clean stuck hydraulic lifters so they work like they should, right? Just make sure you re***emble each lifter with it's original components because there are critical clearances. Also make sure you put them back into the same lifter bore they came out of. Here's a video of a GM lifter being dis***embled but all hydraulic lifters have the same basic components, so take one of your bad ones apart and get familiar with it, then dis***emble, clean and re***emble them one at a time.
I did take them apart and clean them which I thought would fix the issue but it never did. Yea they were new melling lifters. And yes they were kept in order with the same components. This lifter that causes my concern is on cyl number 1 so it’s at the low point on the line when it comes around again. I just thought there was something wrong since every other lifter didn’t do this
Chances are that lifter would do the same thing no matter which bore it was put in. What kind of oil pressure do you have?
That’s how I found out the lifters were not pumping up. It’s a stock cam in there still. Shut it down as soon as I heard the awful noise
How long did you run it before shutting it down? You may not have run it long enough to let the lifters pump back up. Once you have oil pressure it should quiet down within several seconds.
About 10 minutes. I began to prime the system again when I shut it down and then started it again. And it had the same issue. forgot to mention this valuable peiCE of information. I had an oil plug missing in the distributor hole but that has since been fixed. And yes even when the hole had been fixed the 10 lifters still did not pump up.
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