My 71 Duster work in progress

[68R/T]

The main thing that you want to accomplish with the breakin is tempering the cam, which is done. With a fair amount of zinc additive I doubt that you'd have an issue. It's not like your dealing with a high miler.

 

[b-body-bob]

The answer to how can you test, before installation, stand the lifter in a pan with a very low weight oil, (5w-10, or less), deep enough to cover the oil hole. Pump it full with a phillips screwdriver. Remove from pan, let set for period of time, and test for firmness of plunger.

A guy at FABO suggested I must not have cleaned it enough, because it still isn't working right. Because they only thing that could be wrong with it is it's dirty. OK then.

So I took it apart and cleaned it really well this time. All it had in it was oil. Then I put it back together, dropped it in some 30w break-in oil and pumped pumped pumped but it never did pump up. Oil was above the hole and there was some air pumped out but it never got solid.

I should've ordered new lifters instead, but I'm hard headed that way and also sick and tired of spending money. So I waited a day.

I remember back when I was a pup you would pump lifters up until they were solid before installing them.

I'm just going to order a new set of the same lifters. I just need 2 or 3 to be good and maybe all the new ones will be good. I'm going to pump them up before installing them. There's no difference between that and putting it all together and running the primer rod to pump them before setting preload.

 

[b-body-bob]

With a fair amount of zinc additive I doubt that you'd have an issue.

I dumped the initial break-in oil and replaced it with another fill of the same that's still in there. So zinc shouldn't be a problem.

 

[68R/T]

I remember back when I was a pup you would pump lifters up until they were solid before installing them.

Might be wise to only work on those that are questionable. To your knowledge the rest are working correctly. The less new metal against that cam the better.

 

[b-body-bob]

Might be wise to only work on those that are questionable. To your knowledge the rest are working correctly. The less new metal against that cam the better.

I agree with you.

I'm planning to put the rockers and pushrods back in place, prime the engine and turn it and prime it again (repeat through two rotations). Then wait an hour or two and any that aren't rock solid are out of there.

 

[b-body-bob]

I pressed the pushrods and counted 5, maybe 6 lifters that have bled off at least a little. I may disassemble those in hope of a good cleaning putting them in working order to save some broken-in lifters.

UPS tracking shows the parts arriving today but it also says they're still at the nearest depot to Summit's warehouse. So I'm pretty skeptical. LOL

 

[b-body-bob]

I just cleaned 5 lifters that had leaking off at least a little bit. The other 11 were rock hard like they should be. Then I put the rockers back on and primed the engine to see if they leak off over the next couple of days.

BTW I wasn't able to pump up the first or second lifters outside the engine so I gave up on that. The oil in the can and in the engine is 30w break-in.

 

[b-body-bob]

Three lifters have collapsed and the other two from yesterday have leaked off a little.

One that I didn't check yesterday seems like it bled off - I don't really see movement but I can hear a click so it's moving whether I can see it or not.

I'm giving it all the time in the world to show me which lifters are bad. I won't have replacements until Monday at the earliest, then I get to disassemble and clean those, so if I'm lucky it's going to be Wednesday before I get back to reassembling things. TBH it could go to next weekend. To do the best I can about finding the bad ones, I'll just leave them as is until I'm ready to install the new parts.

 

[68R/T]

As long as you have a system to weed out the bad ones eventually you'll get there.

 

[b-body-bob]

I had no luck pumping up lifters on the bench so I've only got half a system.

This was posted at FABO

Can the lifters be noisy on startup after the engine has been sitting for a while?
Yes, they definitely can. When the engine is shut off, some of the lifters may not be on the cam base circles, but may instead be on the lift portion of the lobes. If that happens, the lifter is under constant load from the valve spring holding the valve open. Eventually, the force will bleed the oil out of the lifter, resulting in clearance during the next engine re-start. The engine will clatter momentarily until the lifter refills with oil to take up the clearance. High ratio rocker arms, strong valve springs, and high lift cam lobes all contribute to this situation. In reality, the lifter wouldn't function without its ability to bleed down under load. So, there's no way to completely avoid it.

Sounds good, eh? The problem with that is the engine is at TDC, the lifter leaking off the fastest is #1 exhaust, so the valve is closed, so it's not on the lift portion of the lobe. It shouldn't be bleeding off like it does. But it is.

I should've used a solid lifter but it's too late now.

 

[b-body-bob]

I finally got the engine parts yesterday. It rained Tuesday at about the time UPS makes a pass on this neighborhood. The official reason the delivery was delayed was due to an invalid address. I think the real reason was the driver went home when the rain started.

For some reason the county renumbered houses and renamed some streets. The reason given was to assist with 911 calls, but even the first responders don't know where they're going now. Smooth move people. My package had the new address on it. Yesterday they had crossed that off and put the old address on it.