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LS6 Roller Lifter Failure

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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 09:21 AM
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Default LS6 Roller Lifter Failure

Here is the damage from the LS6 after market roller lifter failure.
I'm not sure that is what it was but that is what I am going with.
You can see the crack in the block on the number 8 cylinder.
There are 2 of the lifter journals that are just eat up to bad to even rework.
You can also see that there are 4 cam lobes that are eat up with deep grooves.
The reluctor wheel is also damaged bend repair.































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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 11:25 AM
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Stock cam?

Ouch, ouch, ouch

Appear to be stock ls1 type lifters to me.

Is this the car you had bought with engine trouble?
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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 09:51 PM
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Look like the lifter turned in the tray.

Get linkbars.
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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 10:06 PM
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What brand lifters (obviously not stock)?

What cam?

What springs?

Usage (autocross, endurance, drage race)?
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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 10:29 PM
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I bought this car off Craigslist.
It had been sitting for 3 years before I bought it.
The guy I bought it from was military and he said he was driving the car down the interstate and it started loosing power. He said he limped it to the next exit and the car died and he could not get it to crank so he had it towed to a friends house. that is were it sat for three years. when he got back from germany he put the car up for sale. He said he did not want to deal with it anymore.
The car has an aftermarket car, just not sure what cam it is. The heads also have double springs and ComCam push rods. Not sure on the lifters.
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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 10:46 PM
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I responded in your other thread about the cam.

From what was posted: It's an LG G5X2 Livernois Motorsports, most likely ground by Comp cams.

As stated above by Jake, lifter could have spun in the tray.

Call LG and give them the specs on the car, it's possible they did the work and can give you specifics.

At this point in time root cause will be difficult to determine. So many people blame this component or that component when in reality, too many variables skew the data.

None the less from the pictures posted all is scrap metal at this point.

I do have one question however, how were the valve springs? Any broken?

Seen several z06's one of mine included break stock and comp valve springs, resulting in catastrophic block failure.
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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 11:06 PM
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It has double valve springs and they all checked out. Nothing broken.
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Old Jan 29, 2016 | 11:38 PM
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I think double vs could be where you should point your finger. All ls stuff comes with beehives. Why back them up with old school vs? Last I checked adding weight to the valve train wasn't really a good thing.

I've seen double vs tear up roller rockers in weeks that I had ran for years.
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99% of lifter failures are caused by a valve train that is out of control. The lifters act like a fuse in a over loaded circuit because they're the weakest link.

Loss of control is a combination of TOO aggressive of a cam lobe combined with not ENOUGH spring pressure, at least in 15 degree LS applications. The LS7 stuff has some issues that cause lifter failures which we found on the Spintron last month that I won't get into now.

For example, last year I had a customer who said he had "3 cam lobes go down" in 1500 miles on one of our turbo cams, which uses LXL intakes lobes, (not too aggressive). He shipped the cam and lifters to me and 3 lifters had failed which damaged the cam. I was a little baffled because I assumed he had our spring kit. Come to find out he said he had a "Patriot Gold spring kit that had been on 3 different engines". A Patriot Gold spring isn't sufficient for a .600" lift cam when new, let alone by the time they've been on 3 engines. I gave him a discount on a replacement cam and our Platinum spring kit and the engine is still running with no issues.

When we Spintron tested a .600" lift Comp XE-R lobe with a Patriot gold springs we saw almost .700" lift!!! That amount of loft is going to kill lifters quickly! Roller bearings are not designed for that amount of shock loading and will fail!

Also, lifters don't just arbitrarily spin in the trays, the lifter fails FIRST, which causes severe friction, which then causes the lifter to spin in the tray.
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Old Jan 30, 2016 | 07:40 AM
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Brian, ever see a lifter spin on a stock car?
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