Uncle Tony says Gen III hemi has inherent lifter lubrication problems. Agree?

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Bill Crowell said:
370 Hemi on ChargerForums.com has had the hardness of the camshaft and lifters assayed by Stephen Walsh, who appears to be an engine lubrication expert, and who informed 370 Hemi that the metallurgy of the cam and lifters was just fine:

Answers: 5.7L Hemi Camshaft Professional Failure Assay
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Interesting that he claims that's its NOT a lubricating problem as far as volume, but a problem with the amount of "stiction" of the oil. Very interesting. Of all the 5.7s I have replaced in my shop, ALL of them had delamination, and zero appearance of a lack of oil.
 
Also surface hardness testing is almost meaningless in this situation, when peices come off in flakes, it doesn't matter what there surface hardness is.
 
Bill Crowell said:
370 Hemi on ChargerForums.com has had the hardness of the camshaft and lifters assayed by Stephen Walsh, who appears to be an engine lubrication expert, and who informed 370 Hemi that the metallurgy of the cam and lifters was just fine:

Answers: 5.7L Hemi Camshaft Professional Failure Assay
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so better oil is the answer? Wow, even an easier fix although these cams are stock in a stock setting. Does this indicate the recommended oil is just inferior? It still sounds like the design is not tolerant to the prescribed oil properties. Are these lobes chrome/? plated? Whats coming off in flakes if its a forged camshaft...
 
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pishta said:
so better oil is the answer? Wow, even an easier fix although these cams are stock in a stock setting. Does this indicate the recommended oil is just inferior? It still sounds like the design is not tolerant to the prescribed oil properties.
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It's almost as if he was suggesting the oil is too slippery....I think his opinion is flawed also. But that's just my opinion who knows
 
I have to agree with racer43 on this. I have disassembled many of these 5.7 engines. I found a delaminating cam in a 2012. Lifter wheel and needles were perfect on the afformentioned lobe. Had that engine run a few more thousand miles, it would have been toast. I'll post up some pics later.
 
I think Tony is sound in his own diagnosis and sharing his thoughts and opinions. Right or wrong, his diagnosis makes sense that there could be a lack of oil situation. Sure the delimitation of the cam could also be an issue with the poor quality of Camshafts as described, but that wouldn’t explain the lifter scoring. Starving for oil makes total sense here, again maybe only part of the problem. As he mentioned, maybe add a hole at the bottom of the lifter or maybe even the sides to add additional oil, the push rods are oil through so maybe? IDK. I wouldn’t say he’s totally off base. How would the metallurgical process fail with a roller cam, unless there is another variable added. Poor metal met with poor oiling breaking down the cam. This mostly occurs over the course of thousands of miles, well past factory warranty so who cares run it till it breaks. Like anything else.
 
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I watch his new videos and they’re pretty good but when I watch an old video that he is throwing stuff and cussing I like those ones way more.
 
I managed a police fleet for nearly 20 years. For my last 11 years before I retired, I switched the fleet to Chargers (when the venerable Crown Vics were no longer available).

The biggest problems with the Chargers were the front suspension bushings wearing out early and then of course, the cam/lifter problems with the Eagle engines. (Note: The agencies with the Ford Taurus and Chevy Caprices had WAY more problems going on than I did. The Charger was by far the right choice.)

Tony has some very good points that would be exacerbated by the high idle time that our Chargers endure. Unfortunately, I could not monitor every car often enough and the officers (with some exceptions) usually didn't report a problem until the check engine light came on. By then, it was because a cam lobe was entirely ground flat and the engine had a miss.

I did however, catch some cars from time to time early on when I would hear a chirping sound. The rollers were going bad in the lifter; it would seize up and just skid over the lobes. FCA always covered the problem, sometimes twice or even three times in a vehicles life cycle with us. (This was good, but it sure was a pain having a vehicle down for warranty) I had contacts deeper into FCA than just the dealer, but even those guys swore they did not know what the problem was. To this day, I don't believe them and I'm not there any more to see if some of the newest cars start having the problem. I suspect FCA has at least tried some changes, either with the lubrication design, or cam/lifter manufacturer.

I do know that the earlier cars have lifters made in Germany and they look like precision machined artwork. Don't know on the later cars. To my knowledge, unless things have changed, the SRT cars received forged cams and the 5.7s were cast cams. My personal suspicion is that it's an oiling problem, especially at idle, but I don't think anyone outside of FCA engineers really know for sure. It could also be a FEW problems like oil AND camshafts AND lifters, going bad individually, depending on the driver and maintenance situation. BTW, my cars had their oil changed every 3,000 miles, using a synthetic blend that met FCA specs.
 
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As promised. The lifter off of this lobe is fine. I'm not really disagreeing with Tony. If you take enough of these apart, you'll see a lot of scuffing of pushrod and valve tips. You'll also see exactly what he talks about on the lifter bodies. I wonder, with enough low pressure and idling, that heat builds between roller wheel and lobe. Thus, starting to "peel" up the surface. Kinda like taking a torch to mill scale on flat bar. The rest is history. But, as I said earlier, the wheel on this lifter was not damaged. IDK.
 
Bill Crowell said:
I would like to know if you guys agree or disagree with "WhitePunkOnNitro" Tony's opinion that the block design of the new hemi has deficient lifter lubrication, and why. Here's the video:



Thanks for your opinions.
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I personally know 2 people with GenIII cars that have had to replace lifters.
One 30k miles and the other at around 50k both were maintained per the book using full synthetic oil.
A local Sheriffs deputy told me that they automatically replace all lifters every 60k or it will destroy the engine.
I guess I will stick with my old school Mopar engines.
 
Does anybody know if the Magnum roller motors had lifter problems? I have a 360 magnun from 02 with 140,000 miles I bought used and haven't tore it apart yet, word was it came out of a Van.
 
Pffft....
I have 347,000 on this truck. Never used synthetic oil either.

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tonysrt said:
Does anybody know if the Magnum roller motors had lifter problems? I have a 360 magnun from 02 with 140,000 miles I bought used and haven't tore it apart yet, word was it came out of a Van.
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Never heard of the 5.2/5.9 Mags having cam lifter issues. My dad had a 94 he put 334,000 on before it ate a head gasket. Never was opened up.
 
He started his modern hemi series by admitting he was still learning about them. The most modern motor the guy has probably wrenched on has been a 5.0 in a fox body.
 
Things to consider on cop car engines how much idle time at low oil pressure? At 3000 miles how many hours has it been? When i was working at the dealer we saw cop cars with 60k miles and 5000hrs. That's a lot of idle time.
 
When things really go bad the lifter turns 90 degrees in the holder and the roller eats the lobe big time. Seemed to be more of a problem on cylinders 5 and 7. We never saw cam lifter problems on the 2003-to maybe 2008 engines. Seemed to start on the later motors.
 
With our cars, they started replacing the whole engine and shipping the old one back to FCA for analysis. A zone specialist challenged our maintenance schedule and said we needed to change oil every 3,000. I said "we already do that". Then he came back to me and said we need to change it every "??" hours instead, because of idle time. When I calculated the amount of hours our cars went between changes, it was less than what he was recommending.

I've always suspected idle time being the problem but wasn't sure WHY the idling could cause the problem, other than possibly low oil pressure. I think Tony had some very valid points that show what problems would exist especially during idle.
 
I like Tony and Kathy both. They are both fine folks and will help anybody. nobody knows everything. I think he's a good dude for making and sharing all the videos and information. Also, they've busted their asses in the past to provide their fellow Moparites with good used parts at decent prices. Tony has a long racing history including fuel cars. Also he's written for several publications. He's not some fly by night know nothing. Don't agree with him? I don't necessarily agree with everything he says either, but I sure as hell ain't about to bash him after all he and Kathy have both contributed.
 
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Well, it wasn’t the lifters or the cam that caused me to replace my 2007 5.7 at 140,000 miles. It was the valve seat coming loose. Apparently that was a problem with some of these engines. I had more miles on the car than what was the usual mileage when this would happen so I thought that my engine was a good one. Jasper engines said that their remanufactured engines fixed all of the known problems of the 5.7 HEMI. So far so good.
 
Yes, the early 5.7 weakness through '08 was valve seats dropping. I had one do that at 75,000 miles. When I was getting ready to change the fleet over, FCA PROMISED me they have fixed that problem for the Eagle 5.7s, '09 up. Never had that problem with the Eagles, just the cam/lifter.
 
Hellcat Cuda said:
With our cars, they started replacing the whole engine and shipping the old one back to FCA for analysis. A zone specialist challenged our maintenance schedule and said we needed to change oil every 3,000. I said "we already do that". Then he came back to me and said we need to change it every "??" hours instead, because of idle time. When I calculated the amount of hours our cars went between changes, it was less than what he was recommending.

I've always suspected idle time being the problem but wasn't sure WHY the idling could cause the problem, other than possibly low oil pressure. I think Tony had some very valid points that show what problems would exist especially during idle.
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Good points, but the fact that the same failure occurs in engines that do NOT have extended idling periods, would seem to indicate its NOT a low speed oil problem...
 
Bill Crowell said:
Slopar72, I also find Tony to be irritating sometimes. For example, he seems to feel that he needs to post a new youtube video every day. I guess that's how he makes a substantial part of his income. Unfortunately when you feel you've got to upload a video every day, the quality inevitably suffers.

Also, I wonder why the guy doesn't realize he is killing himself with his chain smoking. Once he said he was going to quit, and that it was going to be easy. Apparently he had never tried quitting smoking before*. He quit for about a day, at the most, before he was back to puffing the cancer sticks.

However, Tony does have a lot of experience with Mopars, and he is definitely smarter than I am about them, so I'd better not badmouth him too much. I do learn things from his videos.

*As noted youtube car guy Jonathan Winans (Jonathan W) has remarked, even though he did successfully quit smoking a couple of years ago, he still craves cigarettes every day. Nicotine is incredibly addictive.
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Iv watched alot of his videos and I'm pretty certain those are not cigarettes!
 
I wonder how many issues the police/patrol cars have. They may sit and idle for hours at a accident or emergency.
 
408 swinger said:
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As promised. The lifter off of this lobe is fine. I'm not really disagreeing with Tony. If you take enough of these apart, you'll see a lot of scuffing of pushrod and valve tips. You'll also see exactly what he talks about on the lifter bodies. I wonder, with enough low pressure and idling, that heat builds between roller wheel and lobe. Thus, starting to "peel" up the surface. Kinda like taking a torch to mill scale on flat bar. The rest is history. But, as I said earlier, the wheel on this lifter was not damaged. IDK.
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Is it possible that lack of oil is what's causing the delamination issue?
 
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