No wonder this started rattling!
 

Car is in the shop for an engine rebuild and transmission swap. Thought the issue was a worn thrust bearing (which it was) but then they found this! Opinions?

Well your not rebuilding those two roller lifters if that’s what your eluding to?

What you want to do now is confirm that those two lifter bores are still usable by placing a good lifter in them and comparing the clearance and how they feel when traveling up & down those two bores.

Those roller cams are nothing but trouble :)

(The HFT Clan)

I've seen the consensus on this site go from everyone had to have a 462 with 041 cam and rhoads lifters to everyone has to have old faithful roller camshaft to OMG where is the good roller lifters mine tick or are falling apart

Glad I dont follow herds

Your extremely lucky your block is not busted lifter bore broken out

Remove and replace

Hey! I'm in a clan... :)



Frank

Dude, every time I see that face,https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...ine=1507838785 I just loose it, omg, epic ! :pound:

As for your post... Word Up!, every word...

My sympathy to whittp.



Frank

Building my spare engine, and still on the fence for big HYD FT vs SMALL Roller cam.

Sorry to hear of your trouble whittp. Seems another link bar roller retrofit bites the dust. I am pointing this out because there are guys posting these lifters are trouble free which they are not. Far from it actually and these lifters are expensive to boot so not sure the juice is worth the squeeze.

I would like to thank Jim Hand for banging the 041 on a 1.65:1 rocker arm drum to avoid all the problems we are now seeing. I bet the farm Pontiac engineers would have never used or approved the link-bar retro-fits for use in a production setting because of the warranty nightmare it would have caused.

Jim didn't sell you parts and knows what he is talking about.

Same here HIS. If you never drive it I'd go roller as it cool to say you have a roller motor even know the bearings are not.

Always wanted a BMW :D

Sorry for your mess. I would send that pic and lifters back to the manufacture. What do you think happen did the link bar fail and let the lifter go or did the lifter start floating and bind up the link bar causing it to break

I see the STREET roller in a Pontiac as the delicate balarena that may or may not break a toe the next dance while flat tappet is out there break dancing crushing it for years

The thing that drove people from STREET flat tappet was a change in motor oil that's been resolved, And lifter / cam quality
Choose wisely

I have never lost a flat cam prematurely

.

Wow it had to be running bad and down 50 hp.

Did it hurt the cam can’t tell from pictures?

OMG there it is again https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...ine=1507838785 Bwahahaha ! You gotta tell me where you got that eventually.

I've never lost a cam prematurely either, luck? Perhaps, but I'm kinda in luv with Lunati stuff too.

Edit - As mentioned my sympathy to whittp, hope you find the cause, and grateful it didn't cost you more.



Frank

What should I do now? I would think I would have to go with the same cam (yes, the cam is compromised) and lifters since the build is pretty heavily modified. The Eheads flow about 305 cfm and the rpm intake is port matched and so forth. The cam is the Comp 51-433-9.

The engine made 532 hp and 578 tq last time it was on a dyno. It's in a new shop now (prior builder has retired) and now is the time to do it if I can make some changes to keep the engine more reliable.

I love how the engine performed and I'd like to keep it that way if possible.

BTW, this is the same car that the 200r4 torque converter ballooned and trashed the thrust bearing. It's getting a TKX swap now.

Boy you're just having an array of problems.

Would help to know which lifters those are. They look like the Comps that Paul has always complained about.

Comp 857 Lifters

That's what I figured.

Pic looks like it did get the lobe a bit, so a new cam is in order.

Would I have the option of changing to flat tappet cam and lifters while keeping my same rockers and push rods? I don't have the specs in front of me right now I attached a picture maybe that'll help.

Dam that's a Piss off. Not sure I can say that. but. Sorry for your issues. I've used the 847 lifters in the pass with no issues. I run the Crower solid lifter with the hydraulic cam. No issues to date. All street driven. We have the Johnson hydraulic lifters in another engine and no issues with them either.

Charles

If you go flat tappet cam and lifters, geometry will change and new pushrods will be required. The rockers will be fine.

Who setup your pushrod length on the roller setup?

The engine was built about 7 years ago and the shop owner has retired. The documentation for the build is at the new shop. Buying a new set of pushrods isn't a big deal for piece of mind and reliability. What are the performance trade offs? Is there a cam that will perform similar to what's in it now?

Put my Comp Cams roller lifters in over a decade ago (picked them up from SD along with Dave's Old Faithful cam). Absolutely no issues. Had to pull the engine apart last winter for another reason, and used a high performance reputable builder in my neck of the woods. The lifters, cam etc. were all checked over and reinstalled as were.

Without knowing what you have now there isn't a good answer. Generally though with the rollers carrying more lift under the curve, and having a good set of aluminum heads on the engine, it's going to be difficult to get the same performance from a flat tappet cam unless you get pretty wild on cam timing with the flat tappet, and then the whole question of drivability comes into play.
Yes you'll have to swap pushrods, and you'll need a different set of valve springs if you go flat tappet.

Personally, I'd stab a roller back in it, same thing you had since you were so happy with the performance of the engine, and either go with the Comp 857-S lifters or a set of Johnsons.

Sticking with the same cam profile keeps things simple for you. It's already been tuned and running for 7 years, you were happy with how it ran and performed, and you won't have to swap pushrods or valve springs.

I should clarify that it has not been running for the past 5 years. The engine only had about 400 miles on it when it failed.

Not sure what cubic inch you are running? With 305cfm heads, throw Dave's OF2 cam in and push it up closer to 600hp while still being very streetable :)

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

It is a 68 400 block with an eagle rotating assembly. Cubic inches are 461 with this set up. The crank is also going to have to be replaced due to the thrust bearing and I figured I'd go with the eagle forged crank. Connecting rods and pistons are all in good shape.

This thing is a mess inside and I'd sure like to not repeat this again. Hoping the TKX will solve the issue on the crank getting pushed around (and be a lot more fun to drive). Now I'm worrying about the reliability of the top end as well. What can the shop do to ensure it'll be good the next go round? They did mention that most of the prior build was done well but a few corners were cut. Rings not exactly right, bottom end not balanced, #3 was burning a little oil and it's probably the valve seal.

With crap getting thru the motor from the failed thrust bearing I wonder if some of that got into the needle bearings on that or other lifters and the whole thing was a time bomb?

Sometimes builds go that way with some shops. I've had fairly fresh builds in here that were running okay, but when I tore them down and took them to Paul for a going over, all kinds of things were found to be "subpar" even for a mild street build. It was a matter of time before things went south, and just lucky very few miles were put on.

Hate to hear it and very unfortunate for you, but maybe the shop you're at now will do a thorough job and straighten things out.

Steve25 I was hoping that too but the shop said no evidence of that causing the failure. That was the first thing they thought as well. What work can be done to the lifter bores to rule that out as a future issue?

The shop may suggest looking at the lifter bore clearance. That's supposed to be pretty tight. Around .0015" at the most if I remember right. Having one too loose and flopping around would certainly be an issue.

Can be bushed if that's the case, a good shop will know what to do.

Roller bearings are one of the reasons Germany lost WWII. Tanks do not need roller crank bearings, but they had them. Cost,time=lose.

OP, first thing you need to do is cut your oil filter apart and see what you have going on.

Roller bearings lost the war. Nope.

Solid roller lifters generally requires a lot of spring pressures over the hydraulic rollers and longer push rods. I never liked comps. solid roller lifters design. For about 10 years I have ran Crower Hippo solid roller lifters for street driving. Lash has never changed doing yearly check , but you're going to pay more for Crower. Because of another board member recommendation I had Crower add another oiling hole. Go Crower Hippo solid roller lifters and never look back and enjoy the powwa

The addition of Roller bearings in the main driver’s and rods of Steam locomotives in our country is what helped us win the war when the oil that was previously going by tanker to the east coast had to rerouted by rail due to the tanker losses to German U boats in the Atlantic!

That was not what I was trying to say. The Germans had a habit and still do of making things over complicated when it was not needed to get the job done.
Made equipment hard to produce, time consuming and expensive.
We won the war because we simply out produced them. Their Panzer tanks were far superior to our Shermans but we made 50,000 of them !!
They call that POS Sherman Ronson,s because they lit the first hit, every time.
Operating a Sherman in WWII was horrible duty.

Yup, I got your point and fully agree, as making repairs by having to change out roller bearings in the field when used as in that case for crank bearings is far too time consuming!

Probably reuse the rockers. If your pushrods are shorter than stock, Might need stock length pushrods to attain contact geometry.

If I decide to go with Crower lifters what is the comparable part number to the Comp 857? Is it wise to use the Comp cam and the Crower lifter combination?

No problem intermixing the two brands other then what might change with the needed push rod lenght,

I mix match brands all the time. Flat tappet Comp or Melling with Johnson flat tappet lifters, and different brand hydraulic rollers with other brand hydraulic roller lifters. There are no real issues with doing that. It's more about buying the quality parts that work.

Like Steve mentioned, other than possibly pushrod length changing for the different brand hydraulic rollers used.

Why are you changing the transmission?

I ask because you've never mentioned the failure of the trans pump.

If the trans pump isn't trashed, the converter didn't balloon. It might have pushed forward due to excessive fluid pressure in the cooler circuit, though. That could wipe the thrust bearing on the crank, but not damage the trans pump.

Any chance this build had a crappy Eagle thrust face on the crank when it was assembled? They were known for that problem years ago. I'm told that's been taken-care-of since then.

Link bar failure is rather rare. Could you post a photo of the other side of the lifter showing the rivet?

Ball bearings - we bombed their ball bearing plants and this was a part of what ended the war, shortage of ball bearings.

What does the pushrod look like? Never used a roller cam/lifters, but would it be possible that the rocker arm had it's polylock loosen up, or was not adjusted correctly, and the pushrod became jammed and bent near bottom - enough to blow out the side of the lifter having the link bat attachment?

I'm not sure about the transmission but the shop said there was a noticeable amount of metal in the pan when it was removed. I'd really like to go with a similar set up since I was happy with the performance of the engine. I'm pretty scared of the bad stories on the Comp 857 lifters though. What are your thoughts on going with this combination?

https://www.crower.com/lifters/lifte...traight-1.html

https://www.compcams.com/xtreme-ener...5-455-cpg.html

They are really expensive compared to the Comp lifters but cheap in comparison to another engine pull.

Yep, Bremen for one. We lost a lot of guys in those daylight bombing raids of that damn city.

The M4 vs the Pershing- lot of differing opinions on that one. One being why in the world did we keep trying to prop up the M4 instead of going all out on getting the Pershing into the war earlier.

Crower still making good stuff. I was able to get my set of Pontiac Sportsman rods at "close out" special in July but it took some time to get them. They are sweet looking for certain and well balanced.

Rough year for HR lifters!

Here is a picture of a friend from Germany's 455 lifter/bore failure.

The engine had JUST been re-re-rebuilt.

After the car was imported, the owner realized the engine was bad. So had it pulled and took it to a shop.

1st build, the builder installed the wrong sized bearings. Motor was toast within a few hundred miles.

2nd build, with a different builder, the valve springs were installed without checking the pressure. Turned out to have just 60-65 pounds at the seat! The lifters were bouncing on the lobes, and pulverized the cam and lifter rollers within ~100 miles.

3rd build, same builder as #2. I suspect the lifter bore was cracked during the 2nd failure, and they just did not catch it. Mild HR from Butler, as were virtually all the parts.