A cautionary tale when working on push rods

[furrystump]

Pretty easy to not center the pushrod. I take a picture with my phone to confirm each is centered. Had them snap into the lifter bumping it over once when setting the lash! From then on, unless I see it centered, it isn’t!

 

[CHARLES FEARNEYHOUGH]

Wow! I guess I got lucky and learned an important lesson. All the retainers are accounted for. Four of them came off. Others are damaged. You can see the three retainers if you look closely. I really messed up. I've ordered lunati 71977-16 lifters. Should be here at the end of the month. Never again will I do this without removing the intake. The bright side is that since I've gone this far I'm going to re-cam while it's apart.

 

[512Stroker]

Wow! I guess I got lucky and learned an important lesson. All the retainers are accounted for. Four of them came off. Others are damaged. You can see the three retainers if you look closely. I really messed up. I've ordered lunati 71977-16 lifters. Should be here at the end of the month. Never again will I do this without removing the intake. The bright side is that since I've gone this far I'm going to re-cam while it's apart.

View attachment 1715925725

Send them back to Comp
I very muck doubt you caused all those failures.

 

[linzbach]

I know this thread is a couple months old, but wanted to chime in with the experience I've had this week as well, in case others are wondering if this is common or experience something similar. Hopefully this will be useful. We have a fully rebuilt 318 LA engine with Edelbrock Performer RPM heads and Comp Cam cam, lifters and pushrods.

When we originally fired the engine up there was valve train noise and I couldn't ever get the timing to be stable at higher RPMs. We pulled the valve covers and re-set the pre-load/lash on all rocker arms using the Mopar 90 degree rotation method (see photo). We ran the engine and it seemed better. Within a few weeks the engine had developed a loud tick in the top end again. Pulled the VC and found a super loose rocker arm. So I tightened it up, put the VC back on. It sounded and ran better... for about 30 minutes... then the noises were back .

So I pulled the intake and discovered the same exact issue that Charlie had with the lifter retainer clips failing. Turned out we had SEVEN clips that had popped out and 1 lifter that was essentially collapsed/stuck in the bore (see photos).

After breaking it in, we ran the engine up to 5K RPMs but I don't think that should be enough to hammer name brand components like this. It's quite possible that the initial pre-load wasn't enough (or too much?) and it caused the issue at start up. I just bought and installed Lunati lifters that have a different lifter clip (see photo) so I'm hoping it is more durable or forgiving. We should have it on the road again this weekend so I'll provide an update on what happens.

If anyone has some last minute advice on setting lash/pre-load with hydraulic flat tappet lifters, I'd love to hear it before I get this all buttoned back up.

 

[PRH]

This pic from post #15 basically tells the whole story.

That style of plunger retainer has essentially zero tolerance for the pushrod “stepping on” it.

If I were forced to use hyd lifters in something, I’d either get some that had the tru-arc style retainer, or if they weren’t available, I’d swap out the snap rings myself.

I don’t use the lifters with those thin stamped plunger retainers anymore.
They’re fine if the valvetrain stays in 100% control, but at higher rpm....... that’s often not the reality of what’s actually happening.
And then you get scenarios like what are going on in this thread.

Here’s a pic of some 1993 vintage Lunati Micro-trol lifters....... with what I consider the “good” style retainers(snap ring):

 

[PRH]

I recently was talking with a customer that I did some work for on his BB heads.
His daughter has an A body with a 360 in it that runs a fast rate hyd cam and these same lifters.
The valvetrain is out of control big time before 6k........ and after a few trips down the track, they also had this same issue with several of the stamped retainers riding around on the pushrods.

And if those clips aren’t riding around on the pushrods(and are hopefully still in the valley and not in the pan).......imagine how out of control the valvetrain had to be to let the clip escape from between the lifter and the pushrod.

 

[linzbach]

Thanks for the additional info, PRH. We got lucky too as 6 of my 7 broken retainers were still wrapped around the push rods and one was still in the valley.

I promised a quick follow-up when I got the new Lunati lifters installed so here it is. I'm happy to report, that after about 50 miles, the valvetrain sounds better than ever and the 318 seems to run much smoother than ever before, which probably means the damage to the CC lifters happened early in the break-in procedure.

Here were a couple of notes and tips to hopefully help the next person:
1) I bought a new bottle of break in oil (Lucas Oil) and was generous with it on the lifter bodies, cam lobes, pushrod ends, rocker to valve stem point, etc. (which we also did the first time)
2) This time rather than adding a zinc break-in additive to the oil, I used Lunati break-in oil, every quart has the zinc and elements needed for break-in and it was about the same price as regular Mobil oil
3) It's easier to torque the rocker arm/pushrod with the intake off because you can visually see when the hydraulic lifter begins to compress so you don't over or under set the lash
4) After fully rotating the engine about 6 times using a 1/2" drive wrench (that totally sucked), I finally hooked up the remote starter (took 2 seconds) and bumped the engine over 90 degrees at a time. I just used the ratchet to make minor adjustments to get it at exactly 90 degrees that was WAY easier !
5) After initial start-up, the lifters will pump up and there was some slight valve noise, but after one heat cycle, it was virtually gone... the rockers arms are all firm and there is zero lash in the system so things seems to be doing OK for the moment.

We are going to put some miles on it and then hammer on it to see if we break these lifters too. If anything crazy happens, I'll report back and will probably start seeking out the lifters with the snap rings that PRH posted .