I’ve said it many times on this forum and been preaching it for years, I don’t care what lifters you buy or what reputation a lifter manufacturer has, disassemble EVERY hydraulic lifter and clean them before using. If I use a hydraulic lifter in any engine I screw together, it gets disassembled, inspected, and cleaned prior to use. It’s easy to do and saves big headaches later.
Yeah it's much akin to disassembling an oil pump, yet, people just will NOT do it. Our auto shop instructor hammered that into us when we were kids in school. Take everything apart and inspect it. It does two things. First, it teaches you how things come apart and go back together. Secondly, it enables you to find any possible defects or metal shavings and such. There's just no down side and lots of people are just too STUPID to take the advice and do it.
It’s funny, my auto shop teacher in high school, Gene Luft, did the same thing. I give him credit for how anal I am about cleanliness in engine building.
Sounds like we were both very fortunate. Ours was James P. Lovett (RIP). He was WWII Navy and retired Mercedes Benz tech from the late 40s-mid 70s. He was retirement age when we attended. He even allowed my best friend and me to take the course a third year when it was only a two year course. Our last year was the year he retired. Our high school auto shop was nicer than just about any auto shop in Macon at the time.
Agree we were. Gene retired a few years after I graduated, I kept in contact with him while I was in college but lost touch after that. He was tenure and I believe he retired wealthy on a beach somewhere warm. Or at least I hope he did. Our auto shop sounds similar to yours, he ran a tight ship and could tell who was there because they wanted to be and who was there for “an easy A elective” and he didn’t let them skate through, but he let us pretty much do whatever we wanted.
