Hey guys, I think its a bad lifter, but I wanna see if anybody has had this problem before. I recently installed a cam with new lifters and for the first 100 miles or so, it ran great with no problems. I then took it out on the freeway going about 70mph and when I got to my destination, I noticed it was ticking. I figured one of the valves needed to be adjusted no I pulled the valve cover off and checked. It was good. I even started it with the cover off and couldn't really notice the noise, but the engine was still cold. After I reinstalled the cover, it was fine. I took the car out for a drive and after 5min of driving, it came back. Any suggestions to what it might be?

 

well, i pulled the lifters back out and found out one of the lifter was concaved in from the bottom....i looked into the hole to see if anything was wrong with the cam, but didnt really see anything obvious beside a small amount of pitting along the sides of the cam lobe. i didnt know if the cam was eating at the bottom of the lifter or if i had got a bad lifter that wasnt treated right and didnt harden as well, so i just replaced the cam and lifter as a set.....

 

Did you use a liberal amount of moly break in cam lube?
Did you follow the proper break in procedure?
If you have heavy duty valve springs, you want to break in the cam using lighter weight springs, or with the inner springs removed if you're running dual springs.
Something wasn't right, and made the cam lobe eat through the hardening on the lifter.

 

Yea, I bought a can of redline assembly lube and used up way more than I needed to along with some zinc additives for the oil. I just have single springs that I believe is stock so I dnt think its the springs.....it only happened to one lifter..all others were ok with no signs of abnormal wear.

 

Hopefully it was just a defective lifter then.