Hydraulic Roller Lifter Failure
 

Less than 500 miles on a fresh engine. A pretty mild Lunati Voodoo cam 219/227 and .515/.530. I had a ticker and it was getting worse so I decided to take a look at the lifters. This is what I found.

Get a set of Crower solid lifters and run them. Set lash at .004 cold . I’ve been running them for the past 10 years on hydraulic cam. Just set lash today. Runs like a champ.

Yikes!! Are the lifters Lunati brand as well or something else...?

Just curious, were they lunati lifters? That looks like my failure

Ouch!!!!

Tim, is the cam intake lobe wiped out now....or hopefully a camera artifact?

I am very sorry to see that result on your engine. It does make a case for keeping it simple unless building a dedicated race engine. I have been saying for years I see just as many failed roller lifters and flat tappet ones. There are allot of failure points in a hydraulic roller lifter. All the potential failure points in a flat tappet hydraulic lifter plus the roller and the Chinese needles inside the roller wheel. The tie bar and fasteners have failure points as well. I guess there is no absolute clear winner in the lifter world. Being generally cheap, I hate to spend the extra $1000.00-1200.00 for the same results. Again, sorry to see this. Hope cam and lifters are the only damage.

Oof. That is a bummer. Doesn’t appear the cam is usable either. Taylor Michigan made Johnson lifter’s????

Looks like the bearing went out and broke the link bar. That or the link bar broke and took out the bearing. At least you caught it before it did more damage.

What viscosity oil and do those lifters have needle bearing oiling? Wishing you the best on your rebuild.

Wow that sucks ..... It could've been a whole bunch worse!

We had a link bar break a couple years back lifter turned sideways and took the roller off it had Comps in it. That was a OF 2.0 from SD.

So how can you tell what failed first, the link bar or the roller bearings?

The only lifter bar failure I've come across was with a Lunati hydraulic roller lifter, but that set was installed a few years ago. Just like with Tim's, the damage was minor with the roller skidding sideways on the lobe until it made enough noise to be investigated.

Too small of sampling, but a few more reports and we might be seeing a trend.

The terrible failure in mine were Lunatis. I don’t know exactly what order the failure occurred in though

Sorry to see this!
How is the valve spring on that intake port with the failed tie bar?
While it looks kinda dry in that valley and around those lifters, did the noise start after you buzzed the motor or just putting around?

This sucks for sure - are they Lunati HRs?

Definitely not Lunati, or any of the rebranded Morel lifters. The Morel's have a matte silver finish to them and have Morel, or the rebranded name laser etched on a silver link bar.

These look like like Johnsons that I just put into my new engine.

I will say it's pretty interesting to see that the link bar was torn away from the lifter body and the rivet is still in tact. Based on that, I would almost think that the roller may have gone first.

The only other link bar failures I've personally seen have been the result of losing the rivet.

Tim, did you have any indication before these let go? Can you verify the lifter brand, or do you not want to?

I hate to see this. When I freshen the motor in my Catalina one of these days here shortly., my 20 year-old quiet as a mouse Morel lifters are going right back in. Let’s make valvetrains great again!

Man sad to see. But I mean it may not matter in the end, but ya gotta post which brand lifter you were running .....

Hate to see this! Getting ready to install and crank up my new engine in a few weeks.

Did the rocker arm come loose ?
I've seen that break a tie bar.

GT

Rocker arm did not come loose valve spring is fine no indication anything else was wrong. It was tapping but not bad so I went in to take a look not happy with what I found. They are Johnson 2112OPR lifters I purchased several years ago and just getting around to using them in a new motor. Less than 500 miles so there must have been something wrong with the lifters for this to happen. Cam lobe is ruined and lifter will not come out. After I pull the engine I will need to drill out the rivet and slide it out from the bottom. I have contacted Johnson Lifter and talked to Joe Lewis on the phone. I have turned in a claim on their website. I'm not sure if Johnson will do anything for me. I hope they will do a failure analysis. Being it has been a long time since purchase and I no longer have the receipt I don't know if they will do anything.

21120PR perhaps you meant?

Yes 2112OPR is correct

A lobe on my brother's billet roller got similar damage using using CC 857S when they first came out, bought the set around 2016. The plunger got stuck down and the roller wheel broke. I sent the cam back to CC and they welded it up and reground the lobe good as new.

I wonder if the link bar holes are the issue, I wonder if the hole is punched after heat treating the bar and then the punchwork starts a crack or stress riser... I imagine they are heat treated at sometime so they don't wear fast, And a bean counter would probably prefer punched hole vs. a drilled hole

Did they give you a new set of lifters?

Well SHIIIIIIIITTTTT!!!!!!

They fixed the cam for free and gave me a new set of lifters. I had all receipts, pictures etc documented. 10 out of 16 lifters had stuck plungers and I followed the install instructions to the T. I figured out it was the the anti corrosion goop they assembled them with using another set I had that caused the stuck plungers.

This is pretty much exactly what Lunati tech told me when I called them regarding the noise my lifters made. I inquired about why initially they were quiet, but after about 500 miles, the clacked.

I was told they use a protectant that can gum up and cause the plungers to stick. They recommended running Sea Foam through the engine and changing the oil, but that never helped anything.

The Johnson's I ordered from KRE and put into service immediately, I don't recall being coated with anything. They were dry, at least externally.

I had a brand new set that I removed the C-clip and immersed them in toluene and plunged them numerous times until they moved freely. I couldn't believe how much black garbage came out. After cleaning them thoroughly I installed them without issue.

Well this black goop tells me all I need to know. Before the parts come states-side, someone forgot to read the commie cosmoline removal memos? Seems like a disconnect from where I am sitting and if one hand has no idea what the other is doing, I would rather sit this one out.

Anyone know if the commies are doing the same thing on the HFT lifters?

Currently there is no safe harbor anywhere and realistically things have been off the rails for a pretty long time ... In the early 90's I replaced a camshaft and lifters after dropping in the lifters I spun the oil pump with my reversable drill simply because I could, OMG copious amounts of glitter came running out of the top of the new lifters needless to say the horse was already out of the barn so I kept spinning the pump for a very long time before proceeding changed the filter prior to startup

OMG! I hope you get reimbursed somehow!

This is hot rodding unfortunately. The Johnson lifters are fairly well regarded, but nothing is fool proof.

Heck for GM and Toyota are going through it with engine failure on brand new stuff right now. Penny pinchers looking for the bottom line have gone too far in one direction and failure payouts are rising. We're due for a swing towards quality.

Yep. As my old friend and mentor used to tell me “New does not necessarily mean good.” Either I’ve been lucky or what Bud taught me works!

Agree! In my experience, this has been true for everything that sells competitively for at least 3 decades.

I'm not holding my breath. Large businesses have an amazing ability to avoid spending money on quality and reliability. There are lots of "creative" ways to manage higher-than-planned losses that somehow appeal to companies more than the cost and time needed to assure those losses are low...

Yes, I'm an old cynical dinosaur.

Mike

In my line of daily work we have had a fair amount of gear that we have made by the red communist arrive with either defective or with a bad issue that we do not find out about until it has got into customer hands.

One time a cheaper inferior major part was used and we had replace these two parts in 800 units before we sold any more.

In a more recent occurrence the red communist factory that made the item of gear for us made a production change in a circuit board without telling us nor getting
our approval.
And that ended up with us having to disassemble 1100 items of gear to implement a correction.

Just recently we got to the other side of another production mess that took near 4 months to straighten out.

This is all on gear that the company I work for own the production and design rights on just to be clear.

And I could give plenty more examples.

If you get anything automotive that’s been made in China and it has been assembled there and you do not take it apart to check it out then I am not the least bit surprised that there are the failure rates taking place that have been reported.

If that black metallic **** that came out of those lifters was not found then the whole engine could have been lost.

I think it's important to point out here that the lifters Tim was running are made here in the USA.

Morel lifters are primarily made here and in Mexico.

We have quality issues all over the place, regardless of the location of manufacture. China can produce really good products, the USA can produce really ****ty products. It's not either or.

It's definitely a good idea to check every component these days. With my recent engine build, I pad quite a bit extra to have their race prep engine assembly done, instead of basic machining and assembly. Hopefully I got my money's worth on that.

Made in the USA doesn't mean much anymore, clearly. And these aren't the higher quality Hy Lift Johnson's either. They are Johnson's, a different company known for making good quality flat tappets but usually not the higher quality rollers. Hence the reason they are $400-$500 cheaper.

They might be assembled here in the US or some other form or procedure but that doesn't necessarily mean all the parts and pieces were from here.

I soaked the Morels for the OLDS before installing, even tho the docs said not to.

I soaked the Crower HIPPO solid rollers too, it also said not to.

Spotts soaked the CC extreme HRs for my 463, they too stated not to soak I believe.

I soak in engine oil after.

I refuse to install anything without cleaning, learned my lesson long ago.

I'd still be interested to know if there are any witness marks on the valley pan.



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I always soak the rollers in break in oil before I use them. Don't care if a paper says not to. I'm not installing them dry. Never been an issue.

I would love to know these manufacturers misplaced logic as to why not to soak them?

I have no evidence to back this up, but it's my theory that it's a hedge against improper installation.

although I don't necessarily know how this would happen, my theory is that soaking the lifters may have the ability to pump them up, and or dislodge garbage that may otherwise be carried away in the pressurized oil stream after installation.

*IF the lifter gets pumped up, it would be easier to install these things and not have them adjusted properly. That itself can lead to noisy valvetrain and may beat the lifter up so much that it damages it and then the engine.

Again, absolute theory on my end with no evidence to back that up, but if you're having two separate problems and can only solve one of them, you might choose the one that is causing the most amount of issues.

My understanding on this goop issue is that the protectants being used are water based as mandated by the EPA. As a result it can create sludge when the engine oil is introduced to it.

So, what are the solutions? You ship the product without protectant. That can cause it's own issues if the product sits on a shelf (especially in a humid climate) for any real length of time.

So how do you solve that? You build to suite at the time of purchase. The problem there is you now don't get to take advantage of economy of scale. You also can't deliver as quickly. It's 2025, everyone expects these parts here tomorrow. Prices go up as a result, and if the purchaser doesn't protect the product themselves, you still end up with a potentially corroded part.

The real solution is being able to use a proper oil based protectant for the part that will inhibit corrosion and not gum up when engine oil is introduced. That likely takes a literal act of congress at this point though.

Cannot speak for other manufacturers, but I posed a question in the comp evo lifter thread, specific to their instructions. No reply as of yet.

They, Comp, specifically state TO clean the lifters, soaking/cleaning in toluene or some such solution BUT, they also specifically state to NOT wash out the break in lube for the needle bearings put in by the factory.

This is obviously for roller lifters, what’s being instructed for FT lifters these days I’m clueless to.

I believe the reason the manufacturer recommends installing them dry is it's easier to adjust the lash if the lifter is not pumped up. Upon start up the lifter will fill with oil pretty quick and won't damage anything running a few seconds with no oil. There may be other reasons too but I trust that the manufacturer knows best in this area. In the future I will disassemble the lifters and clean then install them lubricated with WD-40 but not adding oil.

It comes on the same literature that also tells you to set preload at so many turns, yet they have no idea what rocker ratio or what the thread pitch on your stud is. All of which affects the preload lol

What the literature should be saying is set preload to .050" or what ever spec they prefer, and it's everyone's responsibility to get out the dial indicator and check it.

If your worried about pump up you could just do your lifter adjustment then prime the engine before putting distributor in. I have always soaked mine but I think priming would work also.

I agree with you and it makes me wonder what they say to do with motors that use shaft mounted rockers because that leaves you with no choice but to measure .

I do all of the above.

I soak mine before install, it's never affected adjustment. I get the lobe on the base circle, adjust polylock until all slack is taken up without moving the plunger, set up my dial indicator, set the preload to desired measurement...........done.

I always prime the engines with intake and valve covers off, making sure oil circulates properly. And I'll do it again before fire up if it sits for any length of time.

If you're worried about pump up, put a dry lifter in first, take your preload measurement with your dial indicator so you know how many turns it's going to take. Then soak all the lifters, install and simply set preload via pre determined turns that you measured with the dry lifter. Simple.