tappets noise with 976 on a BB

[c00nhunterjoe]

Then you need to reassemble it, prime it with the valley open and inspect for oil. If you have oil, then you need to keep buying lifters until you get a decent set. Problem is, you may never get them as has been stated already. Even a fair set bleeds down within minutes of shutdown anymore. Alrenative is to buy the race versions, but they cost more then a complete solid setup so that is out of the question based on your budget.

[Nacho-RT74]

HLJ crew told me they had the race versions, just that they use to be noisy, and after describe what will be my use, they advice and sent me the standard ones.

[c00nhunterjoe]

I doubt their race version is what i was refering to. They cost about 1200 for a set.

[BSB67]

Spent a few minutes on line looking in the Hylift catalog.  Seems like the 2345S would be the best choice if I understand the catalog


Also looks like the Johnson line of lifters is over $400, 3 x what the Hylift are.  Wonder why?

[Nacho-RT74]

wondering if this could be the fail on the 976 tappets... the hole  inside not meeting with the exterior hole:



and if dissasembling them could check for anything like that on them

AND wondering if as you said, the 2011s could be made to feed rockers throught the pushrods even my pushrods are sealed balls, that could be the real issue I'm having with the 2011s actually running in my engine ? lifters bleeding through the top plate of lifters where the pushrods rest on.

[PRH]

I've seen that too.  Crazy.  But they were all PR oiling lifters.  I just assumed it was the additional leakage because of the PR oiling.  Do you see that on the non-push rod oiling lifters too? 

I'd have to disassemble a lifter to see how it works for certain, but I don't believe the PR oil comes from the inside of the "piston assembly", but is routed around the piston assy up to the pushrod cup.

To answer your question, it's pretty rare for me to be personally involved with hyd cammed stuff much anymore....... Meaning either building or testing the motor myself.

Since Comp sells the "2011" style lifter for the BB Mopar, those are what they usually get(so if there is a cam going flat situation, everything came from the same place).
A few years ago we did do one with the 976 lifters though.
It had the PRW Pro Magnum copies.
This motor kept spitting out pushrods upon restarts.
You'd go somewhere....... Like to lunch....... Motor was running fine.
Shut if off...... Come out after a little bit, fire it up...... Skipping.
Pull valve covers, pushrod laying in the valley.

Long story short, the pushrod cups in the rockers weren't very deep.
After shut down, occasionally a lifter would get bled down...... Then when you cranked the motor over to start it, the pushrod would just slip out of that shallow rocker cup.

The root cause of the problem was the 976(non-PR oiling) lifters bleeding down.

The cure was....... Swap to Mancini rockers, ball and cup pushrods(where the cup was quite a bit deeper than the one in the PRW rocker), and to preload the lifters more(can't bleed down as far), and it never bothered again.

Perhaps just running more preload would have been sufficient, but we wanted to be as sure as possible it didn't happen again.

[PRH]

If the lifter preload is too much, then the piston feed hole doesn't line up with the hole in the body and they wouldn't pump up.
That is correct.

You should be able to determine how much preload is too much by looking through the hole and depressing the pushrod cup.

On the other hand, something would have to be pretty far away from stock for that to be the case(heavily milled block or heads, cam base circle too big, etc).

It should be pretty easy to determine if there is a real "problem" with your 976's not pumping up.

I assume since they didn't pump up in the motor they are still in a bled down state, meaning...... If you put one on the bench, put a pushrod on it and pump the pushrod...... The lifter is "soft".
If so, just submerge it in a cup of oil and do the same thing.
It should be rock hard in a couple of pumps.

[BSB67]

I've seen that too.  Crazy.  But they were all PR oiling lifters.  I just assumed it was the additional leakage because of the PR oiling.  Do you see that on the non-push rod oiling lifters too? 

I'd have to disassemble a lifter to see how it works for certain, but I don't believe the PR oil comes from the inside of the "piston assembly", but is routed around the piston assy up to the pushrod cup.

To answer your question, it's pretty rare for me to be personally involved with hyd cammed stuff much anymore....... Meaning either building or testing the motor myself.

Since Comp sells the "2011" style lifter for the BB Mopar, those are what they usually get(so if there is a cam going flat situation, everything came from the same place).
A few years ago we did do one with the 976 lifters though.
It had the PRW Pro Magnum copies.
This motor kept spitting out pushrods upon restarts.
You'd go somewhere....... Like to lunch....... Motor was running fine.
Shut if off...... Come out after a little bit, fire it up...... Skipping.
Pull valve covers, pushrod laying in the valley.

Long story short, the pushrod cups in the rockers weren't very deep.
After shut down, occasionally a lifter would get bled down...... Then when you cranked the motor over to start it, the pushrod would just slip out of that shallow rocker cup.

The root cause of the problem was the 976(non-PR oiling) lifters bleeding down.

The cure was....... Swap to Mancini rockers, ball and cup pushrods(where the cup was quite a bit deeper than the one in the PRW rocker), and to preload the lifters more(can't bleed down as far), and it never bothered again.

Perhaps just running more preload would have been sufficient, but we wanted to be as sure as possible it didn't happen again.

Kinda amazing that Ma Mopar got it to work 55 years ago with stamped steel rockers on fixed shafts and the aftermarket still screws it up in an epic fashion. 

[69wannabe]

I've seen that too.  Crazy.  But they were all PR oiling lifters.  I just assumed it was the additional leakage because of the PR oiling.  Do you see that on the non-push rod oiling lifters too? 

I'd have to disassemble a lifter to see how it works for certain, but I don't believe the PR oil comes from the inside of the "piston assembly", but is routed around the piston assy up to the pushrod cup.

To answer your question, it's pretty rare for me to be personally involved with hyd cammed stuff much anymore....... Meaning either building or testing the motor myself.

Since Comp sells the "2011" style lifter for the BB Mopar, those are what they usually get(so if there is a cam going flat situation, everything came from the same place).
A few years ago we did do one with the 976 lifters though.
It had the PRW Pro Magnum copies.
This motor kept spitting out pushrods upon restarts.
You'd go somewhere....... Like to lunch....... Motor was running fine.
Shut if off...... Come out after a little bit, fire it up...... Skipping.
Pull valve covers, pushrod laying in the valley.

Long story short, the pushrod cups in the rockers weren't very deep.
After shut down, occasionally a lifter would get bled down...... Then when you cranked the motor over to start it, the pushrod would just slip out of that shallow rocker cup.

The root cause of the problem was the 976(non-PR oiling) lifters bleeding down.

The cure was....... Swap to Mancini rockers, ball and cup pushrods(where the cup was quite a bit deeper than the one in the PRW rocker), and to preload the lifters more(can't bleed down as far), and it never bothered again.

Perhaps just running more preload would have been sufficient, but we wanted to be as sure as possible it didn't happen again.

I had this same problem on my RB engine, it would be running fine and next day I would go to start it and I could hear it when it happened "TINK" then skip,skip, skip!!! Pull the valve cover and there it was, the pushrod was laying in there and luckily I was able to get it out with a magnet and it wasn't the same one when it would happen either. I also had the PRW comp copies which work fine after I replaced the adjusters with good comp one's. I bought a set of scorpion product hyd lifters that I found on jegs website and reading the instructions I found that the preload was supposed to be between .40 and .60 so I decided to get my dial gauge and see just what my guesstimate of 3/4 a turn were and I found that 3/4 of a turn was only about .35 and one turn put it in spec so when I replaced my lifters I put them all one turn from zero lash and have had no problems with that since. I guess the finer threads of the adjusters are what threw me off, I have not seen the scorpion lifters for sale anymore since but they seemed to be of good quality but they are still make the same amount of noise as the comp lifters did with the fast rate comp cam I am running so i'm guessing if I would have adjusted the comp's properly they would have worked fine too.

I wonder if the OP has an oiling issue somewhere between the cam and the rocker shafts?? I had a friend that put the wrong cam in his 318 and it didn't have the holes in the cam to oil through the head and it burnt up the rocker shafts and wasn't noisy as you would think for it to not be oiling the top of the engine. Something to consider at least and I also had a big block that wouldn't oil one side and the hole going up through the block into the head was stopped up with crud and it wouldn't oil the rocker shaft.

If I had it to do over I would go with a solid cam just to make it more simple and it would make more power which everyone needs...... :-)

[BSB67]

I've seen that too.  Crazy.  But they were all PR oiling lifters.  I just assumed it was the additional leakage because of the PR oiling.  Do you see that on the non-push rod oiling lifters too? 

I'd have to disassemble a lifter to see how it works for certain, but I don't believe the PR oil comes from the inside of the "piston assembly", but is routed around the piston assy up to the pushrod cup.

To answer your question, it's pretty rare for me to be personally involved with hyd cammed stuff much anymore....... Meaning either building or testing the motor myself.

Since Comp sells the "2011" style lifter for the BB Mopar, those are what they usually get(so if there is a cam going flat situation, everything came from the same place).
A few years ago we did do one with the 976 lifters though.
It had the PRW Pro Magnum copies.
This motor kept spitting out pushrods upon restarts.
You'd go somewhere....... Like to lunch....... Motor was running fine.
Shut if off...... Come out after a little bit, fire it up...... Skipping.
Pull valve covers, pushrod laying in the valley.

Long story short, the pushrod cups in the rockers weren't very deep.
After shut down, occasionally a lifter would get bled down...... Then when you cranked the motor over to start it, the pushrod would just slip out of that shallow rocker cup.

The root cause of the problem was the 976(non-PR oiling) lifters bleeding down.

The cure was....... Swap to Mancini rockers, ball and cup pushrods(where the cup was quite a bit deeper than the one in the PRW rocker), and to preload the lifters more(can't bleed down as far), and it never bothered again.

Perhaps just running more preload would have been sufficient, but we wanted to be as sure as possible it didn't happen again.

I had this same problem on my RB engine, it would be running fine and next day I would go to start it and I could hear it when it happened "TINK" then skip,skip, skip!!! Pull the valve cover and there it was, the pushrod was laying in there and luckily I was able to get it out with a magnet and it wasn't the same one when it would happen either. I also had the PRW comp copies which work fine after I replaced the adjusters with good comp one's. I bought a set of scorpion product hyd lifters that I found on jegs website and reading the instructions I found that the preload was supposed to be between .40 and .60 so I decided to get my dial gauge and see just what my guesstimate of 3/4 a turn were and I found that 3/4 of a turn was only about .35 and one turn put it in spec so when I replaced my lifters I put them all one turn from zero lash and have had no problems with that since. I guess the finer threads of the adjusters are what threw me off, I have not seen the scorpion lifters for sale anymore since but they seemed to be of good quality but they are still make the same amount of noise as the comp lifters did with the fast rate comp cam I am running so i'm guessing if I would have adjusted the comp's properly they would have worked fine too.

I wonder if the OP has an oiling issue somewhere between the cam and the rocker shafts?? I had a friend that put the wrong cam in his 318 and it didn't have the holes in the cam to oil through the head and it burnt up the rocker shafts and wasn't noisy as you would think for it to not be oiling the top of the engine. Something to consider at least and I also had a big block that wouldn't oil one side and the hole going up through the block into the head was stopped up with crud and it wouldn't oil the rocker shaft.

If I had it to do over I would go with a solid cam just to make it more simple and it would make more power which everyone needs...... :-)

I've known that hydraulic lifters today are bad, but it appears worse than I suspected.  Here is how we set up all hydraulic performance applications; 0.000 - 0.005" preload.  In the right set up, they would go 7000 rpm.  Pushrods never fell out.

[c00nhunterjoe]

Thats how my preload was on my 383 russ. 15 years of 7k+ abuse wjth no problems.

[Nacho-RT74]

I definitelly got an oling issue too somewhere, because  half front of  PRW rockers bushings said good bye, but even with this, the 2011s got to work but 976 never

engine is dissasembled at this moment and will take a while to reassembly yet.

untill now we haven't found damaged or spun camshaft bearings

[BSB67]

I definitelly got an oling issue too somewhere, because  half front of  PRW rockers bushings said good bye, but even with this, the 2011s got to work but 976 never

engine is dissasembled at this moment and will take a while to reassembly yet.

untill now we haven't found damaged or spun camshaft bearings

Your oil pressure suggest to me that you do not have a global oiling issue.  Your rod and main bearing are getting enough oil.  Your cam bearings are getting enough oil, and your lifters are getting enough oil.  You really cannot have high oil pressure and have any of these being oil starved with maybe one unique exception.

For the valve train itself, it is less certain.  If you do indeed have a wear issue, it is one of two things: 1) poor materials of construction, 2) inadequate oiling.  Lets talk about oiling. But let me reiterate that the standard factory oiling system has proven adequate for much higher hp applications than yours.

Check the oil holes from the #4 cam bearing to the head.  Could be partially plugged or an alignment issue (IMO very unlikely), From there look at how the oil gets into the shaft from the head.  Also look closely where the oil can be going in the shafts.  The more places that oil can exit the shafts, the more likely that the front will be oil starved.  How many holes are there in the shaft per rocker?  Where does that oil go in the rocker, and where does it leave the rocker?  Remember that the shaft mounting holes are places for oil to potentially escape too if the shaft to head fit is not correct, and the shaft retainer to shaft fit is not correct.  Are the rockers adequately covering the banana grooves?  Were the banana grooves appropriately polished to eliminate any wear potential.  Are there dedicated oil holes for roller tip oiling? if so, is too much oil being lost there?  How do they line up?

Remember, the valve train gets oil for a few degrees of crank rotation, it is not continuous.  So with that, it is not hard to send too much oil where it is not needed while starving something else in the valve gear.

Finally, for added insurance, you can slightly groove the #4 cam journal like a 1/4" in the leading direction of the three the oil holes.  This will put more oil up top.  But you kinda need to know what your doing.

[Nacho-RT74]

Ok, it took me couple of days to find the 976 HLJ lifters ( I didn't remember where they were storaged ) they are definitelly charged! I used a pushrod againts the wall and all my weight/force as posible to push them down! No way, they are hard as a rock! Of course the valve springs are way stronger than me ( 120 lbs installed ) but definitely I couldn't push them down! Just got couple of them a bit wet around the cup.

I'll try to post the pics, but they are on my cellphone.

What now ?