Lifter Problem

I have recently had one of the hydraulic roller lifters in my engine fail and have contacted the supplier regarding a replacement. Based on what I have told them, running 20W50 oil and around 350 lbs open spring pressure, they have come back with the following response:

We do not recommend running 20/50w oil in our hydraulic lifters. Our recommendation on oil is a Max of 10/40w and prefer 5/30w for the best overall performance. Your spring pressures are fine. The Max we recommend is around 450. Per your description of the lifter I suspect you have a broken metering plate and a high possibility of others fractured but not yet broken. If you continue to run the 20/50W oil it may occur again, even on a new set.

My initial thought was to just replace the one damaged lifter pair, but they are recommending replacing the entire set. The main issue with this is of course the cost, 1 pair of lifters is US$100 plus some shipping down under. They have offered a really good price on a full set of lifters, but still a fairly substantial cost. The current lifters are about 4 years old, but still have relatively low miles, max 3000 miles on them. The main idea of the hydraulic roller was long term durability, looks like that hasn't proved to be the case.

Of course plan B might be to put the whole lot in the bin and put a hydraulic flat tappet cam back in, which would cost roughly half what a full set of roller lifters will set me back. The current setup hasn't really lived up to performance expectations anyway and I have been considering a cam swap anyway.

Thoughts?

PS: The location of the tie-bar rivet prevents dismantling of the lifters.

Who's lifters are you running and what exactly failed, i.e. did the internal plunger collapse or pump up against the retaining ring? Roller and needle bearing ok?

Were there installation instructions with the lifters indicating what oil to use or what oil not to use?

Thanks,RD.

No instructions at all with the lifters from what I can recall.

I had the old tap, tap, tap... From under the rocker cover and on inspection found one of the lifters wasn't holding up. When the lifter was removed, pressing down on the plunger had oil coming back out of the oil inlet hole.

Edited by WesternRed - Oct/09/2015 at 10:49pm

Can't inspect the metering plates unfortunately, the tie-bar rivet prevents the plunger from coming out of the lifter body. I'm thinking if the lifters are that fragile, then I'm probably better off saving the money and going back to a flat tappet cam. I can sort of wear replacing one lifter pair, but hard to justify the whole set. Johnson brand, supposed to have lifetime warranty by the way, subject to the absence operator abuse of course.

Yes Johnson brand, the pushrod seat doesn't come out of the lifter body due to the location of the tie-bar rivet.