So today I'm taking my engine apart in my truck to upgrade the heads. I look down in one of the lifter trays and see this sitting at the bottom of the tray:





I pick the offending piece out with a needle nose pliers and carefully proceed to take out the lifter trays and lifters. 15 of the lifters are in excellent shape with normal wear. 1 lifter however looked like this in the pushrod cup. Still yet all 16 lifters had perfect surfaces on the rollers and the cam looks great as well.





What's funny is the engine made no funny noise, had good oil pressure and ran like a top.

I have a theory but want to hear from you guys first to get your opinion.

BTW, I found some other small pieces on the drain plug of the oil pan so I'm sure I've at least recovered 1/2 the pieces. Whatever happened, it happened in the last 2K miles of driving since that's how often I change my oil.

 

The pushrod had to of got loose and got up on the lip to break it out. I would really look at the spring to see if there's something wrong with it. I like guide plates to keep things like that from happening.

 

Agreed. Also, maybe when installing everything last go round the pushrod wasn't in the seat of the lifter, and the rockers were tightened down, and upon startup if drove it home and broke the lifter plunger. I cannot see that being a defective lifter the way that it broke.

Either way consider yourself lucky for not trashing the lower part of lifter or cam - been there done that and it through chunks of metal on everything.

 

What kind of valve springs are you running?

I had a lifter fail due to a fatigued spring. It allowed the lifter to leave the cam, cocked the pushrod, and it ended up breaking the lifter.

 

The springs are patriot dual gold springs. What's funny is that I haven't touched the valvetrain in over 7k miles when I did the cam swap and installed the pushrods. I'd also like to emphasize the fact that my oil has been perfect every 2k miles when I change it. I think this happened in the last 2k miles since this is the first evidence I've seen of any metal on the drain plug. I found a few little crumbs along with the metal chunks. I'm going to inspect the cam later when I have more energy.

 

Miss a gear racing an import tuner?

 

LoL no. I've never missed a gear in my life and the fuel cutoff is at 6500RPM's anyways. I've hit it twice

 

The pushrod didn't do that damage, That lifter failed from fatigue AND poor manufacturing.

 

The color of the fracture surface suggests that it had started happening a long time ago.

 

I would agree with that.

 

I would test of the valve springs to see if they are still the correct stiffness and is the one on that cylinder is different. I would also disassemble that lifter and check internals.

 

"fatigue" from what? A high lift - short duration camshaft? why would a lifter this young be worn out so fast? Either it was manufactured poorly or running short duration & high lift camshafts is a bad idea because of the severe ramp angle of the lobe is what you guys are saying, right?

 

When I get home from out of town, I'll take that lifter apart first and carefully inspect the internals and post up pics. The spring will come off and I'll check that as well.

 

I don't think that the cam choice or plunger depth is to blame. You spent considerable time getting all that right beforehand. I think that you just get a bum lifter with some jacked-up metallurgy. While rare, it does happen. Glad to see you caught it before anything bad happened.

 

I would say that is was not properly heat treated. The ripples in the break on the bottom side in the last picture would be an indicator of that. That and it seems to have disintegrated, rather then have made a clean shearing break that would have indicated a pressure from side load applied from improper push rod alignment. If all the other lifters are form the same lot I would ditch them all...

 

That plungler is under alot of stress at all times, it failed from slamming against the lifter body. Bet if you inspect other lifters you may find others have stress cracks starting. This is what happens when CHINA makes everything.

I would check your lifter preload.

 

I also agree. Bet you find the end of the pushrod is just fine.

You are one very lucky man. That could have been a real mess.