Valve Lifters

[Ball Racing]

On my block there is no hole in the lifter cylinder-hole, that pressure oils it like cars have.
Oil is basically splash feed from underneath.
The bearings for the cam are force feed.

[ndutton]

Check the Drawings and Schematics forum category

http://www.moyermarine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5579

[caeruleus]

Well, I turned some soft plastic plugs down on my wood lathe and plugged the holes in bottom of the gallery, and then closed it up with the valve cover and poured in around a pint of acetone/ATF mixture in through the hole for the flame arrestor. I also turned the crank by hand a few times. One thing I'm noticing is that with all the lubricants I'm putting all over everywhere it's getting a lot easier to turn. We'll see if the valves are responding a little better tomorrow. I'm keeping the faith.

[caeruleus]

Lifter still won't come out

Bollocks. I've tried all sorts of penetrant solutions (blaster, seafoam, acetone, autotrans fluid... you name it) and still no joy.

So I removed a valve and the adjuster and tried to wiggle one of the lifters up through into the gallery. No luck. It just starts to wobble but tops out on the valve guide above. Hugely frustrating. While it was up I hosed the two visible inches of lifter with mystery oil, blaster and wd40, none of which seemed to make a difference. So I think corrosion is likely not the problem and it must be the lifters themselves.

Anything I'm missing?

It seems I'll be removing the cam and taking them out through the bottom after all. Somebody please tell me this won't be a difficult job.

So the question is - do I buy new lifters or do I take the old ones to a machine shop and have them turned down slightly? Maybe a dumb question, but I've never been this far inside of an engine before.

Thanks in advance.

[Sony2000]

For the one lifter that is touching the valve guide, I suggest not trying to push the guide further into the block, but it should be possible to cut off 1/8" without consequences, and out will come the lifter.
This above suggestion is conditional on the possible removal of the second lifter that is swollen.
Does the second lifter turn, while jammed up?

[ILikeRust]

Wow, lots going on in this thread.

1. Removing the lifters: I suppose it is possible to pull them upwards and out the top, but it would require first removing the valves, which requires a spring compressor to remove the keepers and springs and then pull the valves up and out - which requires removing the head first. AND you also would have to remove the adjusting bolt on top of the lifter. Other than that, my recollection is there is not enough clearance, even with the valves removed, to pull the lifters up and out through the valve cover on the side of the engine.

The other way to remove them is to remove the oil pan and pull the cam out of the engine, then drop them down and out the bottom. Either way, it's not a small job.

2.

There's no seal in the tappet guide to get dried out and sticky is there? It's just the tappet directly in its hole in the block?

Right - no seal or anything. The lifters are solid metal cylinders, with a bolt threaded into the top for adjusting valve clearance, and each lifter slides up and down in a bored hole in the block. That's all there is to it - very simple.

The diameter of the lifter should be pretty much the same, top or bottom - it is a cylinder, not a section of a cone. If the bottom of the lifter were fatter than the top, other than by the tiniest of a thousandth of a thousandth of an inch, it would immediately jam in its bore the first time it went up. Now, that last little bit of lifter down at the bottom end can get gummed up, effectively making it "fatter" or at least stickier than the rest of the lifter, and making it stick in the bore. I would think that could be addressed by judicious application of solvents and penetrating lubricants - which, by the way, will end up in your oil pan, so you then will have to thoroughly drain that out and replace with good, fresh oil.

[Sony2000]

The second jammed up lifter.
If it can't be rocked back and forth and raised at the same time as I described earlier, then it may have to be sacreficed. Drill a 1/4" hole on its side. Insert a round bar into the hole.
Pull up the lifter by hammering the underneath of the bar. This should work. If not!
Then with an oxy/acetalene torch, heat up until its red hot and pull it out by hammering upwards on the inserted rod.
Going from hot to cold, a can of medical nitrogen sprayed on the lifter, would shrink it, if you choose not to heat it up.
Voila.

[ILikeRust]

I'm confused by the recommendation to heat the lifter with a torch - heating it will make it expand, and make it tighter in the hole, no?

[2dogsnight]

second from the right can be move up and down with my fingers.....the rest - up with camshaft, down with a hammer.......working on it

[caeruleus]

more hassles

Yeah, the head is already off, and I can take the valves out with no problems. But the lifters themselves seem like they gotta be fat at the bottom. There's so much oil on them they should have freed up by now. If I could just slide them out that last little bit into the valve gallery and get them out I could put a mic meter on them and see if they're out at all. Am I understanding right that the valve guides themselves can be tapped up higher into the block? Isn't this kind of begging to deform the guide, and wind up with an even bigger set of hassles?

But now I'm wondering if I can get the cam out without removing the crankshaft. Which direction would it come out? And I'm assuming I may need a new camshaft seal pressed into the block afterwards, right?

It seems that every way I turn I've got difficulties.

And I'm looking at all the bolts. How does one put this engine on a stand?

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions...

[caeruleus]

2 Dog, I'm in exactly the same place. Up with the cam, down with a tap from a hammer and a block of wood. Except I've only got two valves working as they should. 6 sticky. How could they all be mushroomed? Very weird.

[caeruleus]

Sony I can get all of them to turn with a wrench. And yeah, they stick in the up position. How could I trim down the valve guides without filling the gallery with a zillion little bits of metal...?

[Ball Racing]

Take them out through the bottom.
I would not take the trip down Sony's paths......

[lat 64]

Yeah, the head is already off, and I can take the valves out with no problems. But the lifters themselves seem like they gotta be fat at the bottom. There's so much oil on them they should have freed up by now. If I could just slide them out that last little bit into the valve gallery and get them out I could put a mic meter on them and see if they're out at all. Am I understanding right that the valve guides themselves can be tapped up higher into the block? Isn't this kind of begging to deform the guide, and wind up with an even bigger set of hassles?

But now I'm wondering if I can get the cam out without removing the crankshaft. Which direction would it come out? And I'm assuming I may need a new camshaft seal pressed into the block afterwards, right?

It seems that every way I turn I've got difficulties.

And I'm looking at all the bolts. How does one put this engine on a stand?

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions...

Don't worry too much about a stand. You can work on this puppy on a bench.
It really sounds like it should just be disassembled and put back together all clean and shiny. I think any hack-saw mods are going to introduce grit into the engine. Don't get frustrated with a repair, do a rebuild!

[ILikeRust]

I have to say I have a really hard time believing the lifters can be "mushroomed" at the bottom. More likely they're just gunked up or slightly rusty at that last bottom bit.

If you've got the engine opened up already (and I'm not clear on exactly how far you've disassembled the engine), then pull out the cam shaft and they will slide right down and out.