Solid LIfters

[sketchman]

I will be doing Aspire roller rockers with a beefier cam very soon. I just swapped to the solid lifters on my stock cam, and I like what they do. Low idle is steadier and the bottom end feels(I don't know how else to put it) snappier, more solid on/off throttle. If that makes sense.

So, what I'm looking at doing is yanking the hyds from the roller rockers and drilling the arms straight through the top to thread and use a set screw with a jam nut on top just like the old school solid Festiva lifters are.

Anybody done this, and what material did you use? I'm thinking a stainless set screw would hold up, and they come pretty cheap. Do I need stainless? Would a normal set screw hold up?

Pretty sure I remember mattdickmeyer showed some that he used to test things, but I don't think they were meant to be used as a lifter.

Thoughts?

[zoom zoom]

The lifters still ***SHOULD*** spin in the bore of the rocker arm. I'm with you, and I feel your pain over the busted and collapsed lifters, I'm waiting on a set of solid lifters from an 88 carby car atm actually. ^.^

I have tossed around a couple ideas of how to convert hlas to solid lifters, and if I was going to do it, I would probably disassemble each one, remove the springs, check ball, the litttle metal piece that holds the check ball, and stuff a little jbquick or waterweld down in the hole, and some down in the lifters piston part, or make some sort of a metal spacer, possibly out of stainless Dow rod, to keep the lifters spaced the length they need to be.

I can't wait to get the solid lifters and see how they're set up!!! I'll post pics maybe it will help youk I had a thread awhile back about lifters with pics of one disassembled, maybe that could help you figure out how you'll convert?

The way I look at it is the hlas are able to collapse a solid 3mm or better, even if they aren't fully collapsing and making a bad ticking all the time your still losing valve opening.

There are oil galley holes in the rocker arm that keep things lubed up, oil comes from inside the rocker shafts, up thru the lifter, and out the top, then there's a hole drilled inside the lifter bore up to the other oil galley that keeps the lifter lubed.


Keep me posted on how you and up doing this!!! It's Fords biggest downfall, every ranger, f150, and car they ever made ticks. I'm not sure if the problem is one bad lifter or 7 bad tickers.

[sketchman]

Found it.
Like this, but obviously not with a gigantic bolt sticking through it. Same principle, though.

[sketchman]

Oh, the solid ones def do not spin in the bores. They work exactly as I described. The end the of arm is drilled straight through and threaded for the set/lifter screw. It has a jam nut on top that holds it in place. The simplest way to do it would be to replicate the factory setup IMO. If you go with making the stock hyds solid you'd either have to still drill through the top of the arm to allow for adjustments in-car, or you have to take all your rockers off every time you made a tiny adjustment to whatever is holding the then solid lifter up. So it would be, bolt down rockers, measure, take off rockers, adjust, and bolt back down and measure again till you got the lash right.

I wish I could get a pic of them, but they are in my car at the moment. Also, I don't think the stock hyds spin in the bores either. Below is why. You can see(hopefully) very clearly that there is a wear pattern in a straight line back and forth as the rocker rocks and the lifter slides across the valve stem.


I will keep this updated as I go.

[sketchman]

Wanted to test fit a new valve cover so I went ahead and swapped the rockers for now.
This shows how to do it simply and cheaply. You'd have to flatten out top of the arm so the nut sits flat, but other than that it's just drill and tap. Just don't know if I need to use stainless or if regular steel would do it.


Bottom left is a stock Festiva hydraulic lifter. You can see on the solid that it was so loose(PO's fault, not mine) that the valve was hammering the lifter and vise versa, creating flat spots instead of the smooth thin line you see from when I adjusted it properly.

[skeeters_keeper]

Are you talking about using a long set screw as your adjuster? I believe the factory ones are hardened (though I'm not sure how hard) - I wouldn't recommend using stainless or mild steel unless you can get some hardened set screws. The softer steel of the set screw will mushroom (it might be OK for awhile, but who knows how long). Even then you'd need to have the ends ground and polished. The end of the lifter has a slight radius on it so it can "roll" on top of the valve as the angle of contact between the lifter and valve stem changes.

I like the idea of drilling and tapping the factory HLA arms, but I'd use lifter screws and nuts that were designed for the purpose. Wether from a Festy or some other car.

[sketchman]

Set screws are hardened by default. How hard, I don't know, but you'd quickly know if they weren't hard enough. You'd hear it get louder as the lash opened up.

For the rounded bit, they do make them with that style tip too.

EDIT: More info.

Metric Socket Set Screws
NOTES:

1. Material / Specifications: ASTM F912M / ANSI B 18.3.6M, ISO 4026 to 4029, DIN 913 to 916
2. Hardness: Rockwell C45-53
3. Angle: The cup angle is 135 maximum for screw lengths equal to or smaller than screw diameter. For longer lengths, the cup angle will be 124 maximum
4. Threads: ANSI B 1.13M, ISO 261, ISO 262 (coarse series only)
5. Thread Class: 4g 6g
6. Grade: 45H

and

Hardness should be Rockwell C scale mid-50's on the bottom of the lifter. You can check this with a file on the bottom corner.

From here and here.

Should work.

[zoom zoom]

If you pop that hla out of the rocker it has riflings down the side, which is an oil passage, and forces the lifter down and spins it at the same time as the rocker is comming up and sucking in fresh oil. The oil galley hole isn't directly on top of the check ball so oil has to get into that space somehow. They're *supposed* to roll in the rocker, even if 9 out of 10 don't. Ive probably been through...6 sets, maybe more??... Cleaning and trying to fix them. Most don't spin, probably poor oiling, the galleys are very tiny, a small thin paperclip barely gets in it, and most are clogged.

If that one is a stock solid lifter I think ill try to remove the check ball and oil ring seal so the lifters stay fully collapsed, and only use a set screw on top of the rocker assembly holding the dead hla on top of the valve..that would keep oil flowing and a hardened steel against the valve.

[sketchman]

^If you want to go that way I can give you a better option. A stock lifter that you can get easily in the junkyard that fits the Festiva bore and falls apart in your hand when you remove it. As a bonus, it uses a flat faced swivel tip on a rounded nose to reduce friction and provide a fully seated lifter tip 100% of the time.

Gimme a sec, and I'll get pics.

[skeeters_keeper]

Good find on the lifter hardness! I was aware that (some, not all) set screws come hardened - I just didn't know how hard they needed to be.

From McMaster ( http://www.mcmaster.com/#set-screws/=nahmti ) the SS set screws are B80 - soft. The alloy steel ones are C45. Should be close enough.

A friend of mine has a rockwell hardness gauge... I might have to throw a Festiva HLA in my pocket next time I'm heading to his shop, just for curiosities sake.

I still think you'll want to polish/lap the tip of the setscrew somehow - most of the ones I've seen don't have a real fine finish. But that shouldn't be too hard.

[sketchman]

Here ya go. Dodge Neon SOHC lifter compared to a Festiva. The Neon part takes some persuasion to get out of the stock rocker because it uses a wire to hold it in rather than an o-ring, but once it's free it falls apart into the perfect hollow piece to fit over an appropriately sized set screw, and it fits the Festiva lifter bore perfectly. This would also end up being lighter than keeping the whole collapsed Festiva lifter in there and adding the screw to force it down. And then there's that awesome tip.

As you can see in the pics, all you'd have to do is cut it down some, and it would work perfectly.

[sketchman]

If you pop that hla out of the rocker it has riflings down the side, which is an oil passage, and forces the lifter down and spins it at the same time as the rocker is comming up and sucking in fresh oil. The oil galley hole isn't directly on top of the check ball so oil has to get into that space somehow. They're *supposed* to roll in the rocker, even if 9 out of 10 don't. Ive probably been through...6 sets, maybe more??... Cleaning and trying to fix them. Most don't spin, probably poor oiling, the galleys are very tiny, a small thin paperclip barely gets in it, and most are clogged.

Trying to understand this. That rifled passage is the vent side according to what I'm reading. When the rocker goes up and pressure is off the lifter cylinder, it can take up the lash and let in oil from the check ball valve on top. When pressure comes back on it, the lifter bleeds some around the TIGHT clearance between the cylinder and the bore in the lifter body/case/? and out that little hole in the side and up the spiral. I would imagine that most of the time, there isn't much flow through the lifter, which is why it gets stopped up. This could be verified(I think) if it was noticed that the exhaust lifters seize/collapse more than the intake ones.

I'm also curious if you've ever taken one apart, or just tried to clean them assembled?

Also regarding this.

If that one is a stock solid lifter I think ill try to remove the check ball and oil ring seal so the lifters stay fully collapsed, and only use a set screw on top of the rocker assembly holding the dead hla on top of the valve..that would keep oil flowing and a hardened steel against the valve.

Once you thread and fill the arm with a screw you will stop oil flow to the lifter area completely, so no need to worry about that.

[zoom zoom]

Yea I've had a few apart. Where does that oil go when its forced out of the side hole? If the hla is sitting down firmly in the bore, where could it go? Pop a few of those out, look at the oil retention ring width, then look at the wear mark inside the lifter where the oil ring was and tell me it was firmly and fully seated 100% of the time. Riflings make things spin, why would they bother to make rifled oil galleys for an 8k$ car when a straight line would be quicker cheaper and easier? Bad design? Yes...but I bet its basically the same on a lot of Fords, and a lot of Fords tick.

Do those solid lifters have any internal oil galleys?

[blkfordsedan]

The HLA does not spin like a normal OHV lifter on a V8. They (OHV V8) spin due to the curvature on the bottom of the tappet and the cam lobe, which reduces wear. There is no real reason for the HLA's to spin. Wear is not an issue, and they are sealed by an o-ring....which is not designed to be a dynamic type of seal. The HLA is not really supposed to "pump" or flow much oil during operation. All it really does is allow pressured oil to enter it and take up the "lash" in the valve train. If you install an HLA that is pumped up more than it needs to be, it can actually keep the valve from closing all the way. When you install new HLA's, you should use a small straw to hold the check ball in and compress all the oil out first. That way, it will pump up just enough to take out the lash.

[zoom zoom]

Where's that information comming from? Personal experience or is it written somewhere? I disagree, with the wear marks from the oil ring as wide as it is in well lubed rocker arm bores, and those same hlas having a circular wear pattern on the tips instead of the line like the one sktchman posted I'm convinced they were designed to spin and lift at the same time...if you have proof otherwise id like to see it!