Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

After getting the manifold off I pulled the lifters one at a time. I found that the retainer, the part that holds the lifter together, was damaged by the push rod. These lifters have a small center to locate the push rod, so the push rod could set just inside the outer body of the lifter. So when I removed and installed the checking push rod, or when reinstalling the original push rod I damaged the retainer. YES I created this problem  . I have just not ever seen a lifter that would not center the push rod each time you drop it in  . On one lifter the retainer came out so the internals were being held in by the push rod , with the other two the retainer was deformed just enough to holding the plungers down. The good news is I was able to straighten the retainers clean and reassemble the lifters. I inspected all the other lifters for damage, I also inspected the face of each, all looked good.

-- Edited by Bobs_Place on Friday 17th of April 2020 08:08:45 PM

You're lucky the internal piston didn't come out of the lifter body at rpm. I had that happen on my LS5 and the piston fell into the center galley and when a lobe came around, it snapped the cam in 3 pieces. That led, of course, to a godawful replacement cam with 304 duration at .520 lift. Not very streetable anymore, but it sure was fun hammering the pedal at 3,000 and having the L60's go up in smoke at 30 mph..

I forgot about the hip replacement. Good you are being sensible about giving it time to heal.

67ss wrote:

---

Did you look into replacing those retainers with snap rings? Those don’t seem very sturdy.

---

 No I did not.

These retainers put the P/R cup deeper into the lifter than a snap ring would maybe .050-.100". It took a lot of force to snap the retainers in place, and the seemed to fit good.

I am running slightly higher then spec on spring pressure and going from 7/16 to a lighter 3/8 .080 push rods so the valve train should be stable at speed.

I am not to optimist that I will quiet down the lifter noise with the .010' setting so I will likely need a much deeper setting. That puts the push rod cups farther down and away from the retainers. Once adjusted, the push rod cup and retainer should not come in contact. Could the higher valve spring pressure be contributing to the valve train noise?

I have the lifter part no.( XJ-817-R) but cannot find an info on them except that they appear to be in the short travel category based on my measurements.  Are they "Anti Pumpups"?

I suspect spring pressure because I know its high, 20-30# higher the high side of spec both seat and over the nose.

I do have rollers and would expect some noise. Some are consistently louder then others and some I think are not very loud at all.

I had a pickup that had a tic when cold, sounded just like a lifter, I saw some soot around the exhaust manifold/head I tightened the manifold bolt, no tic. I don't think the noise is headers or rocker, as there is less noise when the lifters are adjusted tighter.

After reading about shout travel lifters I was going to set them to the recommended setting of .010", this would give internal plunger .070" travel before it bottomed out and making noise. The problem with that theory is that there is a lot of oil in the lifter under the plunger to bleed out which prevents plunger from bottoming out and make noise! Rather, I think if the lifter is set to .010' plunger travel, with the excessive valve spring pressure, the lifter bleeds more oil from under the lifter plunger when cycled, if the lifter plunger return spring is not capable of returning the plunger fast enough then the clearance between the push rod and push rod seat would increase. If the lifter is set deeper, to .050 to .070" or so, the plunger return spring would be compressed to a higher pressure and hopefully capable of returning the plunger fast enough before the next cycle then the clearance/noise is eliminated.

At one full turn of the adjust, the lifter is bottomed out and the valve starts to open, that's about .080" plunger travel. I was set at 5/8 of a turn, I'll go tighter.

 

 

I have a set of re-threading taps and dies to repair and clean damaged/dirty threads. They aren't hard enough to cut new threads and work well for what you did. I'm always concerned about removing more material when cleaning threads too.

Last week, I cleaned and flushed the heads into the lifter valley were I placed a cloth to catch any debris, than removed the cloth, flush oil pan from cam area.

I set the lifters by using a .030" feeler gauge between the valve stem and rocker tip, then over tighten the rocker and opening the valve to bleed and bottom out the lifter, than back the rocker adjusting nut until the feeler gauge loosens, than lock the adjuster nut and remove the feeler gauge.

Before installing the distributor I reset the curve to 26* at idle and 34* all in by about 2400 RPM, than installed a different vacuum advance canister which should make about 18* more at cruise.

Filled and flushed with 5-30, drained and cut the filter, found filter very clean, 2-3 specks in the filter, the drain pan was clean after sitting then dumping. Fill the crank case with the good stuff and installed a new filter.

 Took the car for a test beet, ran good, very little to no lifter noise.    Big improvement!