How tight to set solid lifters

66Valiant528 said

I found ,with alu heads and cast block, the gap needed to be opened up that much more. I did the 004 to 006 tighter and when the engine was warm I had no lash. I had a leaking valve cover gasket and had to pull the cover. Checked the lash....nothing.

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And that’s something that makes doing lash a bit harder and that is even the same castings won’t always change dimensionally the same. They are castings so even though they may look identical they can vary.

Even billet heads and blocks don’t all change the same even at the same temperature increase.

I sounds like the OP did the lash correctly other than I don’t know if he went tight enough. He just has to verify that when hot.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that some say with iron you set the lash LOOSER when cold. Never have I seen that. Even an iron/iron deal gains lash when it heats up.

For those of you that go to drag races if you are there with blown alcohol cars you should watch them warm up.


Keep an eye on the blower belt. That thing will be flopping around like a wet noodle when they first fire off, but in about 2 minutes you’ll see the belt slowly tighten up.

Thats how much they can grow.