Cleaning or replacing hydraulic lifters

5

'51 Special

Active Member
I'm rebuliding a hydraulic lifter 263 that was running with minimal valve noise. No hop up, just work that needs doing on an engine with 108,000 miles.
Because the engine appears to have ahd the head replaced with a used head, some or all of the lifters may have fewer than 108,000 miles of experience. I just disassembled the lifters. All have nice looking plungers, all have undamaged check balls and ball retainers. All of the push-rod seats are undamaged. The lifters I have are carboned up, and have varnish deposits.

My concern is with the condition of some of the lifter bodies. Motors Manual says: "Inspect the lifter body for blow holes and scoring. Replace the entire unit if the body is roughly scored or grooved." The Buick Manual says: "The assembly must be replaced if the lower end of the body is worn, spalled (small nicks or indentations) or scored with scratched radial lines."

Three of the lifter bodies have small nicks or indentations on the bottom, none are worn at the bottom (though all have some wear along the sides), none have radial lines, none are roughly scored or grooved.

Here's what I don't know:
1. There are relatively inexpensive ($12.50 each from one source) replacement hydraulic lifters that came on the market in the last couple of years. Elsewhere on this forum I found one comment suggesting that they are sourced from the far east, and poorly made, lacking necessary hardening, and did not last. I'd very much like to hear from anyone who has installed these lifters, and put some miles on them. If anyone has had good luck with them, I would really appreciate knowing who your supplier is.
2. My Buick Manual says to wash all the lifter parts "in a suitable solvent." My Motors Manual advises "paint thinner will do." I've tried the paint thinner, and even a couple days of soaking doesn't touch the varnish, though it does soften the carbon. What would anyone who has done this recomment as a solvent.

Thanks for your time and wisdom.
 
The "traditional" solvent for removing varnish deposits is lacquer thinner, not paint thinner. Soak the parts in a glass jar or other non-plastic container that can be closed tightly. If left open to the air, lacquer thinner will evaporate quite rapidly.

Ray
 
I used acetone back in the day,wear gloves!You do know what order they were in,right?:jeez:They have to go back on the same cam lobes!
 
Thanks nali, Ray, and 65special-

I've been able to get the varnish tothe point it won't catch on a fingernail using a looonnnng soak in paintthinner and a soft brass brush. I didn't want to use lacquer thinner or acetonebecause I cannot handle these parts with gloves on. (I do keep each lifter,whether whole or in parts, in a separate labeled container.)

Any thoughts on whether its better(or safer) to re-use the old worn lifters or replace some or all with newlifters from reputable sources (Egge, Kanter, etc.), but which are made in thefar east?
 
Cams and lifters "wear in" to each other, which is the reason for putting lifters back into the same hole they came out of. Quality issues aside, there is a small, but nonetheless very real, chance that your cam might not like the new lifters.

Unless your skin is extremely sensitive, I don't think you will see any bad effects from putting your bare hands in the solvent for the amount of time it takes to retrieve the parts. I did this for years back when I didn't know any better and had no problems at all. If you do have sensitive skin, maybe you could use tongs?

Ray
 
I ve been using trichloroethane for years on bare skin without any pb, but some people are really sensitive to products ..
But I m allergic to vinegar and mustard :p
Nitryl glove don t have latex inside, this may help.
 
They die a horrible death together and all the loose pieces go through the engine and imbed themselves in soft things like rod, main, and cam bearings. Or you can get lucky and the dard pieces go to the bottom and stay in the pan.:jeez:
Doug
 
Doug has it pretty much right. On all the ones I worked on, both the cam lobe and the lifter got destroyed and there was a lot of metal dust in the pan.

IMO, it is worth whatever work it takes to try to save the old lifters. Camshafts for these engines are getting hard to find.

Ray
 
Thanks Ray and Doug.
I went back and looked at the cam and the lifters, just checking the base of the lifters where they contact the cam. I used a jeweler's loupe under strong light.

The camshaft looks good. The only defects I found were two tiny nicks on the very edges of lobes 8 and 15, one of which is plainly a casting void,and both of which are off the cam.

The lifters all have 1 or more tiny pits, which I am guessing would be called “blow” holes or spalling. Eight of them have so little damage I cannot see why they would not be treated as serviceable (particularly in a gently used engine). The other eight range from having 8-10 tiny pits to having perhaps 10% of the surface pitted. Four of those eight do not look to me to be serviceable.

I’ve never before had to determine whether or not lifters are serviceable. Given the danger of installing replacement lifters on the old camshaft, any ideas about how much damage is enough to condemn a lifter. The pitting in some will not catch a fingernail, but will catch the end of a carefully placed pin. I would appreciate anycomments by those who have made this choice.
 
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My lifters are worse than yourse.
I supposed they can be resurfaced .
I would be nice to know how much we can remove from them ..
And what finish is acceptable ...
I still have the old lifters, and at job there s a machinist who would do it for free :)
It would be nice to have a transversal view of them ...

Doesn t anybody have dead 263 lifters, a grinder and a camera ? :p
 
51 Special, did this engine sit for a long time without running? If yes, I think the pits you are seeing were likely caused by corrosion, not wear. Sulfur compounds from gasoline combustion create acid which gets into the oil and eats the parts if the engine is allowed to sit.

If you decide to replace the worst lifters, you must coat the cam lobes and lifter bases with a special break-in lubricant made for this purpose. This lubricant is available from all the suppliers of aftermarket cams and its use is usually a requirement for warranty compliance. Follow the maker's instructions for break-in. This usually involves running the engine at 1500-2000 rpm for about a half hour after starting it and not letting it get down to idle speed.

Ray
 
Nali, your lifters can theoretically be resurfaced, but your machinist had better know what is is doing.

The cam/lifter interface geometry is more complicated than it looks. Lifters are not perfectly flat on the bottom, but actually have a slight convex radius instead. The cam lobe isn't straight, but is tapered so one end is slightly larger than the other. These two surfaces are designed this way in order to make the lifter rotate in its bore.

Ray
 
Thanks raycow .
I really thought they are flat ...
So it s better to send them to a real machine shop than the machinist I know. He s good, but never works on car engine parts.
 
Ray-
I've had the car for 20 years, and it ran off and on until about 8 years ago when I had a small engine fire. Last fall I decided to overhaul it, and started it up just to make certain I knew what was wrong with it. It fired and ran as soon as it got gas, and quickly smoothed out.
As to the lifters, the general pattern is greater deterioration from front to back. The lifters in cylinders 7 and 8 are by far the worst, and in cylinder 1 by far the best. Does that pattern suggest corrosion or something else? I'm pretty ignorant about the cause of the damage as this is the first I-8 I have ever taken apart.
 
As the oil comes from the top on those engines, and flow to rockers via holes from the front to the rear inside the rocker axle, I supposed yourse is cluggued . More on the rear ( cylinders 7 and 8 ) than front ( cylinder 1 and 2).
Mine was really dirty ....
You can remove the extremity plugs to clean it.
 
Your report of the car's history pretty much confirms my suspicions about corrosion. Assuming the car sat approximately level, the rear of the engine was lower than the front during the 8 years it was stored. Contaminated oil would have slowly crept "downhill" along the camshaft, ending up under the rearmost lifters. If your issues had been caused by wear, I would expect them to be distributed more or less evenly throughout the engine instead.

Of course if your inspection reveals the rocker arm shaft to be clogged toward the rear of the engine, then nali's interpretation should be given serious consideration. In that case, look for increased wear on the shaft, rocker arms, adjusting screw ball ends, and the ball seats in the pushrods.

Either way, please let us know what you find out.

Ray
 
Nali, Ray-
I've gone to the coast for the winter, and left the Buick behind. A couple of thoughts:
1. The car was parked on a slab that pitched it down in front, I'd say more than the upward tilt to the front of the engine. (Can't say for sure without measuring the pitch.)
2. When started after eight years, the engine was remarkably quiet once warmed up.
I will check both concerns when I get back. But, the damage appears to be tiny pits where the metal is missing on an otherwise shiny lifter surface. It just does not look like corrosion. I assumed this was "spalling" (tho what I know about spalling is only what I have read), and was the result of surface impact. Certainly lifters get plenty of that.
If it turns out that there is no shaft oiling problem, I am considering droping the old lifters (including the four worst ones) back into their proper places in the overhauled engine. My thought is to try to measure the damage (count the divots, maybe take pictures) before reinstalling them, and them pull them back out after, say, a thousand miles, and see what has changed. If there is no change, I'll keep running them.
My thinking is that this costs me a couple of gaskets and some time, at little risk. But I would appreciate comment from anyone who sees more danger than that.
 
51, I m really far from beeing a great mechanics :p
I just know the shaft is a sensible part on those engines.
Most of the things I know are from reading here ...
I ve spend hours ....
My 1951 rocker shaft is also in a bad shape. I try to find a way to have it rebuild or chromed . Or rebuilt in titanium :)
I just don t believe in corrosion because of storage. I ve had many engine from 1925 or later and never seen any evidence because of this. Don t say this can t happen, but I just don t believe in this beeing usual .
The real pb is old oils were not "cleaning oils". So most of the old engines I have dismanteled were all in the same shape .... 2 or 4 strokes, they are all clogged ....
 
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