heres an interesting SCREW-UP that got posted elseware , you just can't help it youve got to wonder what they were thinking...and wonder why they did not catch a rather obvious faulty parts install, but EVERYONE SCREWS UP AT TIMES so while you may not want to admit to YOUR screw-ups we ALL KNOW no ones immune to having a few BRAIN DEAD MOMENTS the secret is to LEARN FORM OTHER PEOPLES MISTAKES WHEN YOU CAN AND TO NEVER REPEAT YOUR OWN!
STEELCOMP said:Sometimes we come across certain circumstances regarding parts failures that fall under the heading of "other" as far as the why...this time being user error and improper installation, and I think this one is worth sharing. It's a simple error that we've all probably made, and fortunately caught before it was too late. In this case, unfortunately not.
Anyone want to take a guess as to what cause this? This is a BB Chevy. This is the only pair of lifters that look like this. All the others are perfect:
http://www.performanceboats.com/gallery/data/500/medium/Morelfail11.JPG
http://www.grumpysperformance.com/Morelfail11.JPG
This pair of BB Chev lifters was put in with the tie bar upside down.
While this may be obvious to some, I put "for the roller lifter newbie" in the title because this is a very easy mistake to make especially for a first timer. You get in a hurry, you're excited about about being at the point of your build of actually installing lifters, and in fact, they will actually drop right in like that.
Here's what I mean:
IN THIS PICTURE DIRECTLY BELOW, the link bars Correct, arrow "up" on the tie bar:
in the picture directly above, the link bar on the lifter faces the wrong direction resulting in the lifters NOT BEING lined up to follow the lobe center line, thus the roller wheel skids across the lobe not rolling and in short order the cams severely damaged
The engine will run and probably run real good...for a short while but what's happening is the lifter is not rolling on the cam lobe, it's sliding sideways. Interestingly enough, and the reason the wheel on the lifter that is still in tact is rounded off (and this is a dead giveaway to the mistake); on the front of the lobe, the edge of the wheel is riding on the lobe and wants to go clockwise wearing that side, and on the backside of the lobe it wants to go counterclockwise wearing the other side. The wheel is actually riding from edge to edge and trying to reverse direction with every cycle. Also, as the lifter moves up and down it changes the direction of the wheel so it's also twisting in the bore as it goes up and down. This is not good.
So there you have it. Eventually this condition leads to a failure like we see here. The one lifter that failed finally spit out the needles and the roller got lodged between the cam and bottom of the lifter bore and put a hole in the block open to water. The damage is repairable in this case, but it could have been a lot worse.
Now that you know this, and this is what I do; I never look at the tie bar when installing lifters, I always look at the wheels. If they're pointing in line with the cam lobe, you're good to go...if you see they're turned, then you have them upside down, regardless of what the tie bar says.
One of our goals at Staub Tech is to try and help educate the performance enthusiast, especially the new guys, so I hope this was helpful
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