[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by 78w72

the new comp lifters say to do 1/2 turn. the old ones said a full turn. so depending on the stud used, comp changed the preload spec for the old vs new.

.

The current instructions I have for Comp state .045". I know some instructions will tell you a 1/2 turn or a full turn, but that's not a very accurate way, they can't really recommend that when they have no idea what kind of stud is in the engine you bought the camshaft for. You can set 3 different engines at 1/2 turn but different stud thread counts are going to give you completely different preload distances on each engine.

It's best to get an actual measurement from the lifter company, and use a dial indicator on the engine to be certain.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Stripes

Mine are the taller lifter in the photo on the right. Which are "better"?

Okay that explains a lot. The taller lifter with the oil band higher is what you want. So we can forget about having the short lifters in there as a possible cause.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by 78w72

i thought the old ones were the long ones with the roller exposed, & the new "S" ones had the wheel less exposed? its been a few years since i swappped my originals for the new at that time S lifters so i forgot which was which & of course didnt take any pics. there was a noticeable difference in length & the roller exposure between the 2.

The taller lifters are the Shavers and what the Pontiac guys are wanting for the higher oil band. There are some reports of these breaking, weak in the roller area. I believe it was Paul that was telling me they don't like using them anymore because they have had a couple of them fail and cause catastrophic damage. That's exactly why they prefer to use the Johnsons on his engine builds, which are shorter, so he does the lifter bore mod. Johnsons also seem to have better/more consistent internal clearances and quality control.

So kind of have to pick your poison. Me personally, I've run the shorter Morels, and the taller Shavers in Pontiac engines and have all been whisper quiet, with no lifter bore mods. Just threw a brand new set of Shavers in dad's 571 Pontiac last year and they've been absolutely perfect.

[78w72]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

The current instructions I have for Comp state .045". I know some instructions will tell you a 1/2 turn or a full turn, but that's not a very accurate way, they can't really recommend that when they have no idea what kind of stud is in the engine you bought the camshaft for. You can set 3 different engines at 1/2 turn but different stud thread counts are going to give you completely different preload distances on each engine.

It's best to get an actual measurement from the lifter company, and use a dial indicator on the engine to be certain.

agreed that they dont know what rocker an engine has, but the instructions for my new S lifters say 1/2 turn specifically. the instruction for the older ones said 1 full turn. im considering trying cliffs way of adjusting next time im in there.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by 78w72

agreed that they dont know what rocker an engine has, but the instructions for my new S lifters say 1/2 turn specifically. the instruction for the older ones said 1 full turn. im considering trying cliffs way of adjusting next time im in there.

If I could scan and link it I'd show the new instructions I have for the Shavers from Comp. It mentions half a turn, but if you read down the paragraph further is specifically says .045" preload is what they want to see. 1/2 turn doesn't get you there with a 7/16-20 stud.

Personally I would completely ignore the 1/2 or full turn garbage because like I said, thread pitch on the stud will completely change what the preload ends up being when trying to follow that advice. I find it comical the cam manufacture company even puts instructions like that in the box.

[78w72]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

If I could scan and link it I'd show the new instructions I have for the Shavers from Comp. It mentions half a turn, but if you read down the paragraph further is specifically says .045" preload is what they want to see. 1/2 turn doesn't get you there with a 7/16-20 stud.

Personally I would completely ignore the 1/2 or full turn garbage because like I said, thread pitch on the stud will completely change what the preload ends up being when trying to follow that advice. I find it comical the cam manufacture company even puts instructions like that in the box.

been awhile since ive read them, but i will re read them again & readjust to .045.

[ta man]

Originally Posted by Lee

Based on that picture, I'd get a set of 9.10" pushrods.

Look at the bottom of the rockers, and the sides of the current push rods, to make sure there are no witness marks for other contact.


(my wife is an auditor, too. DHS IG)

X2.. I'd sooner see a centered pattern then a good narrow pattern near the edge. Any pictures of a rocker at full lift and zero lift?

["QUICK-SILVER"]

Originally Posted by Stripes

Ok, so what I think I'm learning is there still are noise issues with hyd roller lifters, and while annoying to to us, if the lifter is adjusted properly, it may still be loud but it likely isn't hurting anything in the valve train?

Loud clacking being accepted in no way means it's okay. Some folks just decide to live with it because others are experiencing it. Loud clacking, like in the video, is hammering away at valve train parts. Your valve stem pic looks like it's taken a pretty good beating. That ain't normal or acceptable.



Clay

[steve25]

I am coming to this string late, but if that's a photo of the op's valvetrain, then his push rod geometry is so far off that the rocker is running off the edge of the valve stem!

The op may be able to correct his issue enough by just running lash caps and the keepers needed to accept them.

[Stripes]

With all the photos, videos and measurements I've shared I recognize something is likely not correct with the valve train. Some here say I need longer pushrods to center the wear mark. Butler said maybe I need shorter pushrods, which will move the wear mark further to the edge of the valve stem. I am not running off the valve stem and there are no other witness marks. A small change in lenght is unlikely to make these lifters quiet. So do the readers think the solution is another set of lifters? These were E d port heads out of the box 87cc set up for roller cam assembled. I've tried 1/4, 1/2, 1, turn preload. No difference at all in sound. The only way to quiet these is to bottom the plunger with isn't good. Bottoming the lifter and backing off a turn results in same sound. Am I correct the answer here is another set of lifters?

[FrankieT/A]

From what I've gathered from all these roller lifter noise issue threads( and yes this subject has been beat to death, I've read them all) is this...1) erring longer on pushrod length is better than shorter. 2) Paul's fix of slotting the lifter bore reportedly works and makes sense but I can't attest to that because I haven't tried it. 3) Its crap shoot because some people have been fortunate enough to have quiet ones and some have not. I was not one of the lucky ones and mine are the Shaver. Mine are (were) noisy more so after heat soak(Quiet when the engine was cold, drive around for a while and pull into the garage with noisy lifters). But my witness mark seems to indicate that my pushrods are about .010" too short. If and when I put the Pontiac motor back in I will slot my lifter bores and install longer pushrods. In the mean time I am thoroughly enjoying LS power because of this nonsense.

In case anybody is wondering:
325 E heads from Butler w/ Pontiac length studs
Road Paver cam from Dave Bishop
Comp 2nd design roller lifters
Crower SS 1.5 roller rockers
Smith Bros. restricted and unrestricted pushrods
I spared no expense to no avail.

[78w72]

Originally Posted by Stripes

With all the photos, videos and measurements I've shared I recognize something is likely not correct with the valve train. Some here say I need longer pushrods to center the wear mark. Butler said maybe I need shorter pushrods, which will move the wear mark further to the edge of the valve stem. I am not running off the valve stem and there are no other witness marks. A small change in lenght is unlikely to make these lifters quiet. So do the readers think the solution is another set of lifters? These were E d port heads out of the box 87cc set up for roller cam assembled. I've tried 1/4, 1/2, 1, turn preload. No difference at all in sound. The only way to quiet these is to bottom the plunger with isn't good. Bottoming the lifter and backing off a turn results in same sound. Am I correct the answer here is another set of lifters?

if you cant get them to quiet down with adjustments & changing length wont change the noise... i suggest again to contact comp/butler & ask for replacement under warranty.

thats strange if you told butler about the pattern on the valve tips being low & they told to to go even shorter... makes no sense at all to suggest that. maybe they misunderstood the situation?

if you cant fix the noise & there isnt another issue in the valve train causing it, get them replaced while still under the 1yr warranty. at least then you can verify if it was the lifters, if new ones make the same noise, its something else going on.

[78w72]

Originally Posted by FrankieT/A

From what I've gathered from all these roller lifter noise issue threads( and yes this subject has been beat to death, I've read them all) is this...1) erring longer on pushrod length is better than shorter. 2) Paul's fix of slotting the lifter bore reportedly works and makes sense but I can't attest to that because I haven't tried it. 3) Its crap shoot because some people have been fortunate enough to have quiet ones and some have not. I was not one of the lucky ones and mine are the Shaver. Mine are (were) noisy more so after heat soak(Quiet when the engine was cold, drive around for a while and pull into the garage with noisy lifters). But my witness mark seems to indicate that my pushrods are about .010" too short. If and when I put the Pontiac motor back in I will slot my lifter bores and install longer pushrods. In the mean time I am thoroughly enjoying LS power because of this nonsense.

In case anybody is wondering:
325 E heads from Butler w/ Pontiac length studs
Road Paver cam from Dave Bishop
Comp 2nd design roller lifters
Crower SS 1.5 roller rockers
Smith Bros. restricted and unrestricted pushrods
I spared no expense to no avail.

im one of the "lucky" ones on my new shaver set, they are 99% quiet & even when they do make a little noise when fully heat soaked, its minimal & only at the low 750 idle, the minute it gets some throttle to accelerate from a stop light the noise is gone. & related to the heat, i think its worse on aluminum heads due to expansion, if youre on the light side of adjustment like i am at 1/2 turn instead of the .045 FJ mentioned, then fully heat soaked will make that even less of preload.

also from what tom s stated, the new S lifters have the band in the right location so modifying the lifter bore should not be needed. have also been told from SD & comp that they suggest a 10/30 oil if they are ticking. have read others using thicker oil with no noise so that may vary for each engine or type of oil or how cold of temps you run it in.

ticking lifters suck, hope you figure it out, please report back with changes you make.

[Scarebird]

After this thread and the other concerning hydraulic rollers I decided to hell with fixing the Cranes and pitching them and the Morel straight into the recycle bin.

Enough aggro with them, I will just listen to the soft clicks of the Crower solids.

I have enough windmills to tilt at in my life.

[adynes]

1/2 turn on a 7/16-20 adjuster will move .025 at the stud, but it will move .040 at the pushrod with a 1.65 rocker, and .042 at the pushrod with a 1.5 rocker.

.025*(1.65+1)/1.65 = .040
.025*(1.5+1)/1.5 = .042

[ta man]

Originally Posted by Stripes

With all the photos, videos and measurements I've shared I recognize something is likely not correct with the valve train. Some here say I need longer pushrods to center the wear mark. Butler said maybe I need shorter pushrods, which will move the wear mark further to the edge of the valve stem. I am not running off the valve stem and there are no other witness marks. A small change in lenght is unlikely to make these lifters quiet. So do the readers think the solution is another set of lifters? These were E d port heads out of the box 87cc set up for roller cam assembled. I've tried 1/4, 1/2, 1, turn preload. No difference at all in sound. The only way to quiet these is to bottom the plunger with isn't good. Bottoming the lifter and backing off a turn results in same sound. Am I correct the answer here is another set of lifters?

Check the simple stuff first before blaming the lifters. Look for contact somewhere.

[Cliff R]

I know several engine builders who will not use Morel HR's. The reason, too much noise due to excessive plunger to body clearances. They don't seem to hurt anything otherwise, just noisy no matter how much pre-load you give them.

I'd also mention here that I've ran into quite a few different variety of aftermarket HR lifters. The biggest differences have been the amount of plunger travel. If you go to Butler's site they even offer several variety and list the plunger travel for them.

It really shouldn't matter where you set a hydraulic lifter in theory. The industry "standard" dating clear back to when I got into this hobby was to have them end up pretty much in the middle of their travel. Many engines used "fixed" systems w/o any way to adjust them, Pontiac, Cadillac, Olds, etc were among these.

It became popular to modify many of these engines and if your valve train was already adjustable to just establish zero lash and give them an additional 1/4 to 1/2 turn. With some set-ups this put a lot of travel under the plungers and trapped a good bit of oil under them. Even so in theory it shouldn't matter because a liquid is basically not compressible and they should run pretty much like a solid lifter provided the leak down rates aren't too quick and even with pretty quick rates at high RPM the events are happening so quickly there really isn't time for quick bleed down rates to effect things much. This fact is why Rhoads lifters are very effective at establishing a variable duration cam set-up. Since the bleed down rates are super quick and precisely controlled they reduce both lift and duration and idle and low RPM's, then act like standard lifters at speed.

Nearly two decades ago now I actually back to back tested Rhoads on the dyno against standard lifters. From about 2800rpm's to peak power the dyno charts were virtual duplicates of each other showing that they actually do work as advertised. We also saw right at 2" improvement in vacuum at idle speed and noticeably quickly acceleration when you hit the throttle hard.

So back to noisy lifters, especially HR's. Assuming it's not a band location issue or defective parts, a noisy lifter or set of lifters at idle really isn't hurting anything provided they get quiet at speed. So these lifters that show up with excessive plunger to body clearances and quick bleed down rates although somewhat annoying will run well for many thousands of miles w/o issue. If one wants to reduce the noise a bit you can run them with the plungers bottomed out with a .020" feeler gauge (for example) between the rocker arm and valve. This only allows .020" of bleed down if one is counting on a little "variable duration" and improved vacuum at idle speed, but it will only allow minimal "clicking" when the engine is idling or low rpm's.

I've played around some with the Rhoads V-Max and actually like them vs standard Rhoads lifters as we can control both noise and vacuum improvement/throttle response/low speed power very precisely. If we don't care about vacuum improvement and just want them to be quiet use a .010" feeler gauge for adjustments. They will run much like solid lifters at this point with no need for periodical adjustments.

Back to the task at hand. I've ran into noisy Comp HR's a few times but never loud enough to cause alarm. At most just a bit annoying as the near $1000 "upgrade" to a HR set-up should produce a relatively quiet set-up for the end user, IMHO. Even so when I've ran into this issue I just ran the plungers deeper which reduced the noise considerably. Of course if you happen to have a set installed with around .100" travel, for example, you are going to have to run the adjustors down pretty far before things start to quiet down. I never seen where running the plungers deep has caused any issues anyplace, and personally wouldn't be afraid to bottom them out and back them up 1/4 or even 1/2 turn and run with that deal. A guy could also be even more precise and use a .010" or even a .015" feeler gauge and bottom them out on the base circle and come up with about the same end result. Hope this helps some......Cliff

[tom s]

I have learned a lot about hyd roller lifters,more than anyone should.The lifter that is said to have the most consistent leak down rate is Crane.As been said the only with the oil band in the proper location is the Comp lifter made by Shaver engine in Torrance CA.One of the issue beyond leak down is the lube that is used inside the hyd roller lifters.If after they are built and sit on a shelf too long that lube hardens and can effect the movement of the internals. I guess with ANY brand hyd roller lifter buy them from a high volume dealer to hopefully avoid the issue.I ask Mike Jones if he had a choice of what lifter to use in his own engine he said Johnsons.FWIW,the "older"857 Comp lifter im told were Johnsons.I have a set of them in one of my engines right now.Never had a issue with them and did NOT have to do any lifter bore machining.As I have said before pontiacs have been running Chevy solid roller lifters for 60 plus years with pontiac link bars with virtually NO issue with oiling and no need for a lifter bore mod.So IMHO the problem IS with the aftermarket hyd roller lifters and it is with all makes.And also remember if you want to run solid rollers on a hyd roller cam and want everything straight up you will want to run a about 8 degrees MORE duration as that is about what you will loose when you put the 6 thou clearance on them along with HAVING to run more seat and open pressure as you are now running a solid roller set up and is necessary to control the valve train along with keeping a eye on the clearance to know if any wear on the needle bearings and make sure your idle is higher.Tom

[Cliff R]

I used one set of Crane lifters in a Pontiac to date. I remember them being cut down where the lifter bars attached not straight across the top like most others. I also remember that the engine they went into had no valve train noise and revved right past 5800rpms without a hint that they were going to start acting "stupid" like some others we've tried over the years. At that time, which was around 2004 they were considerably more expensive than other offerings.....

[formula kid]

I have been following this with great interest. I have been looking at video's on valve lash setting for hydraulic lifters and also solid lifters. Then I checked how to measure push rod length. after seeing patterns on the valve what you are getting does not look right.
I am far from and expert on this but am trying to learn what to do and not do when setting up a engine.