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.