Technical Break in oil was not enough

I won’t use comp crane or any of the big name cams or lifters. I have had very good success with Howard’s lifters, isky, and trick flow. And I slather every thing with isky rev lube. If you think you put to much on add some more. Break in oil alone is not enough anymore. Hell the last motor I built I packed the oil pump with rev lube. It’s the only thing I use to scepter for redline assembly lube on the bearings.

 

Yep those were bad
Others and even new LS lifters are having issues.
Ford has has roller lifter issues.

 

Doom, impending maybe. The only odd thing I've done is put new lifters in an engine with 37k miles because of low oil flow to rockers. Oil issue fixed and ran engine up to 131k.

 

Assembly lube and cam lube are different. You should use a dedicated cam lube. Also, as mentioned before, its very important to check and make sure your lifters can rotate when inserted. Its a close tolerance bore and sometimes they get varnish in them that prevent rotation of the lifter. Your current engine needs to be disassembled and flushed before reassembly to remove all those metal pieces floating in it now. As you disassemble the engine, check/look for signs of distress and whether the lifters rotate easily. When flushing the engine, run a small brake hone in the lifter bores to polish and remove any varnish.

Interesting point. And I don't know the answer other than to say that many used cams have been swapped over the years with no problem. I'd guess that some had problems and many didn't. I suppose if new lifters were installed with an old cam, someone wouldn't be any worse off than with a new cam. BUT......thats just an opinion, not anything to back it up on my part.

 

The last cam I purchased was a Howards Flat Tappet (SBC in the Stude) it came with a guarantee IF you used their additive, which I did, it's been almost three years (thought the car doesn't get many miles like a daily driver) and there have been no problems. If I buy a new cam for the engine I will build for the T Roadster, it will be a HowardsCam.

 

Vtx1800 said ,Howards has a no fault 5 year guarantee cam , with the money IMO . failure to use a break in lube like isky rev lube is not good IMO

 

Who`s cam, Comp?

 

I've done it a few times over the years. Two SBCs and a Pontiac. Two aftermarket cams (Comp and Engle) and one Chevy cam. None were a problem. I kept the lifters in order, and I've always used Isky Rev Lube, like Nailhead Jason said. It's thick and sticky so you know it will be there when you go to fire it up. Until recently, all I ever used was Castrol or Havoline and a can of GM E.O.S., the last couple got Comp cams break-in oil.
Junkyardjeff; too bad about the cam. That's a lot of work down the drain and a lot more work to come. Bummer.

 

There is no denying that there are sub grade parts being sold and it's part of the problem. And for some going the roller cam route may be the fix they need. However, if you are going to run a flat tappet cam, there are proactive things that you can do to help yourself:
1. Make sure lifter bore to lifter fit is as it should be and check for lifter rotation before starting.
2. Do one of the following: buy lifters with an EDM oiling hole on the lifter face; buy lifters with an oil slot down the lower half of the side; buy a lifter bore grooving tool and cut a correctly located oil groove in the lifter bore.
3. Based on the springs your cam needs to run, you may have to bite the bullet and start it with low pressure break in springs.

 

My Johnson HT-900 were US made, too, supposedly. Wiped a lobe right off my Crane cam.

I assembled with cam lube, used high-zinc VR-1oil and did the typical break-in at rpm for 30 minutes like I've done plenty of times before. The weird thing was that it didn't show up right away but a couple thousand miles later. I'm guessing it had a shallow hardening depth and when it finally got to the soft spot...

There's some info out there that these are being remanufactured and not properly heat treated. Other info says they are foreign-sourced. Who knows? I do know that I will only use roller lifters going forward.

 

Seems to be more of these types of failures occurring in recent years. It's costing folks a lot of time and money. There have always been issues but not with the frequency we are seeing these days. I'm going to say the majority of these failures are due in part to the offshoring of parts manufacturing resulting in poor metallurgy (i.e. poor quality materials), poor grinding/machining, poor heat treat processing, and most importantly, a lack of proper quality control throughout each process step that would normally insure acceptable parts. Some of it might even be people allowing bad parts to pass through and be sold to minimize loss of profit.

I believe the failures we used to see (and still do) are down to other factors such as clean engine assembly, lifter bore fit, improper valve train geometry, improper cam/lifter lubrication, too much initial spring pressure, and improper break in procedure. These problems are probably in the minority.

Most already know all this. Our job now is to eliminate these issues. We need to hold manufacturers accountable for their poor quality parts and our collective grief . Start by outing them, naming names, and stop giving them your money! Stop believing their half baked excuses.

No offense, but I call B.S. on computer controlled engines dropping out cylinders while at cruising speeds is responsible roller lifter failures.

 

Billions of factory engines and high-performance engines built with flat tappet cams and most had nothing real special done and most were fine.

Suddenly in the last 15 years it seems it's a gamble if your not running rollers .
Yes the oil has changed but a lobe and lifter getting whipped out on a mild performance cam in under a hour is something new in the last 25 years or so .
Has to be crappy lifters.

 

If lifters are foreign-sourced, it should say so on the box.

For those unaware, there are actually some pretty hefty fines associated with mislabeling country-of-origin. I know, because I had to source millions-of-dollars of parts for a major auto maker.

Some of those are large enough that they can cripple, or even kill a company. Very few of the companies that make "suspect lifters" that claim that they are made in the USA would survive these fines.

Even the large suppliers to OEMs, the likes of who could simply absorb the fines as a cost of doing business, they are similarly unlikely to, as they could have their contract dropped by the OEM. If you run one of these companies, and you lose a contract with one of the top 5 automakers, when word spreads, the investment group that owns the company would liquidate you.

As such, all are VERY unlikely to engage in the practice.

In all likelihood, if it is indeed the lifter that is at-fault, it is most probably a quality control issue right here in the good old USA.

I have had more engines built than I can remember. More than 200. Four went into NASCAR K&N Cup cars. Six went into IMSA TC, TC-A, and TC-B cars.

None have had a cam or lifter/follower failure. Based on that number, I suspect the source of cam and lifter failures is another point-of-failure in the engine building process.

I know that everyone swears that they are the best engine builder on the planet, or that their engine builder is the best one on the planet, but guess what?

I'm sorry that I have to say this, but it is simply statistically impossible for you, or them to all be the best.

Mistakes happen. I make them, and I know that all of you make them.

A quarter-teaspoon (roughly a gram, for the civilized world) of fine metallic grit from the machining process left behind hidden in an oil gallery is enough to wipe the hardened surface off of an engine component before it makes it to the filter. Once that it is done, you cannot escape that certain fate.

Cam, main and rod journals a surrounded by sacrificial elements that permit the embedding of particulate matter to protect the harder metal surfaces. A flat tappet or plain follower on a cam lobe is metal on metal. Put an abrasive compound between those two surfaces, and one, the other, or both, are toast.

If that grit makes it to a bearing, it will embed, you might believe that it came from the cam and lifters. If it makes it to the filter, it you manage to find it, much the same.

 

I see a lot of failures, and comments that break in oil was used. Was moly lube used. I was taught back in the 80s to use Moly lube excessively on the cam and lifters. I have followed that Mantra for over 30 years , and cheap oil that I drop at 30 minutes I add zinc now in all stages of break in, 30 minutes, 200 miles, 1,000 miles. On a new cam and lifters, and yes, even an old cam and lifters swapped from a different block. This still works for me, last cam was done in November in a 327. I do source my lifters very carefully, and as of last year I buy old, nos sts off Ebay. My current engine has another summit white box cam, and perfect circle lifters dated 1967, which cost 140 dollars off ebay

 

Warranty of the parts is kinda lame if you think about it. It’s not like changing an alternator/starter/etc.

I mean if your engine eats a cam and lifters, wow, nice you get a “free one “ in the mail.

No account for pulling it out, taking it apart, etc. to clean it out.

But roller cams cost way more than flat tappet set up do, but easier to absorb the cost than it is to spend the time to get it ready to run the same thing again and take another chance.
Just my thoughts.

 

I suspect the major issue is lousy (or non-existent) Q.C. on the part of the manufacturers and sellers (I'm sure not all name brand sellers make their own lifters and cams). A lot of manufacturers view Q.C. as an expense that add to the bottom line, so they reduce it to the bare minimum. Sellers don't do Q.C. because they pay the manufacturer for that as part of the component price, and besides, many are not qualified or equipped to test to standards that precision parts demand. Cost cutting measures to provide better payback to investors is the name of the game. The nature of selling replacement parts is that from a seller's standpoint, it's easy to place blame on the installer rather than accept responsibility, because... how does the user PROVE the part was bad?!? I'd like to have a dollar for every time in my life I've heard "We NEVER had that problem before."...... yeah, right!
While cleanliness is vitally important, stop and think historically..... Do we really believe that the hundreds of thousands of cams and lifters that were replaced "back in the day" were put into surgically clean engines? I don't! Most changes done in shops were performed in the quickest manner possible... that usually doesn't include a complete teardown and cleaning!
The best thing we can do for each other in this hobby is NAME NAMES! Let the world know whose parts are failing as well as those that give good service!

 

I do the same thing; I've got the part numbers in my head, and when I see some new decades old valve lifters at a swap meet for a reasonable price, I snap them up.

 

I wonder how many of the 393 buyers of these "less than $3 each" lifters (and free shipping no less) ended up with a long-lived rebuild?

 

Back in '82 I put a big Ford 6cyl together. Clifford cam [big], Rhoads lifters, Clifford Push Rods, New stock Rockers, Clifford Springs, Retainers, Keepers. In 10 minute of break in valve train started making excessive noise, so I shut it down. The Push Rod ends in the rockers were all hammered to death, rockers were fine. Lifter ends weren't bad as pretty much strait line motion there. Clifford said I failed to deburr the rocker push rod seats! I said they [p'rods] are soft as butter and if need be I'll send him my checking file along with the push rods; I sent him the push rods and he sent me a new set but he dragged his ass and I had to use the 115k stock push rods which worked for 60k more miles till I scrapped the car. At least 10 years earlier a friend had the same issue with a BBC. So there have been issues for years, maybe more reported via the internet but I think the "ocassions" are way more frequent.

 

More info from cam grinders...From the Speed -Talk forum


Re: Lifter Manufactures And Who Are They

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  Post by CamKing » Thu Mar 24, 2022 10:07 am
  
  There is only one flat tappet lifter company that manufactures their lifters in the U.S., Hylift-Johnson.
  That's who manufactures our flat tappet lifters.
  
  
  Mike Jones
  Jones Cam Designs
  Denver, NC
  jonescams@bellsouth.net
  http://www.jonescams.com
  Jones Cam Designs' HotPass Vendors Forum: viewforum.php?f=44
  (704)489-2449

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Re: Lifter Manufactures And Who Are They

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  Post by HDBD » Thu Mar 24, 2022 10:24 am
  
  For clarity there are two companies using the Johnson Lifter name. They are different ownership and not sharing designs.
  
  Johnson Lifters
  25940 Northline Rd,
  Taylor MI 48180
  
  Hylift Johnson Lifters
  1185 East Keating Avenue
  Muskegon, MI 49442

 

Trend, Comp Cams, Howards Cams and a few others manufacture tool steel flat tappets. Lots of the stock eliminator guys have to use these because of the very aggressive cam profiles they use. Pricey little devils though.

 

I suspect that the rate of failure is exactly the same as it has always been.

We just have a way of broadcasting it now, and a bigger market.

 

I remember back in the day seeing lifters with a dent in the bottom of them. This was from a Rockwell hardness tester. Haven’t seen that in 40 years’

 

This is recommended.

 

Lifter to bore to block needs to be correct. Lifter face needs to be correct. Lifter should turn in bore, lifter face should be concave. Lubrication on lifter face and cam lobe should be present at fireup with moly lube. RPM at break in should be high enough to lubricate cam lobe and lifter face with oil. Other than that your at the mercy of the goblins. Lippy

 

Hey, Lippy;
Think maybe you fat-fingered this one. Flat-tappet lifters need a *convex*(rounded to the outside, concave is rounded to the inside) surface so's they'll spin on the cam lobes' tip, which is *supposed* to have a canted surface(not on the heel - which is flat). A concave surface is what produces no-spin & dig-in, aka eating lifters n also cam lobes.

There are other problems due to the material(s) used in casting the cams & lifters. All this s..t was solved by the American auto mftrs in ~'51. Afaik, it was eventually the bean-counters that demanded the cost-savings of different materials. I'm not talking about the move to rollers by the OEMs. While I can't remember the materials used right now, they work correctly when used correctly. & one of them is required to be softer than the other. Can't remember where I read a decent dissertation on this, but there are at least 2 different irons used for cams, & they aren't compatible w/all lifters. Even from the same companies' stuff! . If I can find it, I'll post a link, but don't hold your breath... ;( .

Was & still is, a big problem in an OT group,(little flat-4s, uses air to cool) they've tried the Lube-a-Lifter(or lube-a-lobe -- or whatever the hell it's called, which is a bandaid at best), they also tried ceramic lifters, nope, those were a no-go too. & stupid $$$. Guys detail the cams w/a small file, knocking off the sharp edges on the lobe sides, doesn't help/cure the incompatibility issue(s). Essentially, if you want the mill n flat tappet cam to live, you use 1 of 2 suppliers/mfgrs of toolsteel lifters - both are very good quality. & they aren't cheap, but beats the hell outta an engine rebuild... They are on my list of "musts". & a nice bonus is no cam break-in, & that you can swap cams w/o worrying about compatibility/break-ins/etc/.

There was a very good cam-grinder named Steve Long(sadly just died) who would check & regrind a proper finish on the cam lobes & lifters he sold & ground for his customers. Those cams n lifters lived.

Yup, need to out the sellers, mfrgs, etc of lousy &/or incompatible materials.

& thanks for the info on current other suppliers of tool steel lifters. Gonna check that out. .
Marcus...

 

Lifter face should be convex !

 

One would hope some from each batch is tested for hardness etc, but perhaps discarded afterwards, not sold.

 

That sucks big time!.....

 

Probably most failures are QC related other than installer issues. I've installed a few cams as a kid with just motor oil poured over the cam, some guys used STP and never a failure. I also go very conservative with the lash and adjust the rockers again after the break in is done.