I saw a video on youtube about bleeding lifters. This video showed a OHC engine. Bleeding OHC lifters makes sense to allow the cam to bolted down. So my question is, with higher spring pressures of a OHV engine is bleeding LS lifters needed? I see a lot of people oil soaking lifters but is that counterproductive?

 

You soak the lifters so they're not dead dry when installing them. However, if the engine isn't running, it's not hard to compress the internal plunger to install rocker arms and pushrods. So I wouldn't say it's counterproductive. I've installed numerous cams in LS engines and every time the lifters were either still in the engine, or I oil soaked them when they were new. Either way, I had no issues with the install.

 

As above, soak lifters (I tried to do overnight) to allow oil to get in the roller bearings, body, and ETC before install to give them their best chance for a long life.

 

Getting oil on the roller tip makes sense

 

Does this make sense?

 

Total nonsense. The lifter would have to be completely clogged to not bleed down with minimal force at the low speeds being discussed. That is, unless you are installing rocker arms on a running engine, lol.

 

I used to tighten rockers on an SBC while it was running, lol.

 

When I worked in a gas station back in the Dark Ages (70's...lol) the owner would do that, only instead of the recommended amount (3/4 turn (+/-) down after hearing clicking while loosening) he would only go down about 1/4 turn. He mainly did this on engines that were run hard to prevent pumping up.

 

I did the same thing, actually. Kept the valves from floating at high RPM.

 

I posted once about bleeding/soaking lifters in these engines and WS6Store jumped all over my ***.

 

LOL!!! Same here. I got in a fun conversation with them about the soaking. It doesn’t hurt anything, so why not, was my angle. I soak all of my new ones after cleaning. I’ve re-used lifters that I didn’t soak, because they still had oil in the cage and were vey clean. I ziplock bag stuff like this in gallon bags at disassembly, and put a little oil in the bag before sealing.

 

I also soaked my SR lifters in my old SBC combo....not a bad thing to do.

 

Get oil on the body and the roller axle or bearings. Do not prefill. An empty lifter will do it's job after a few seconds of oil pressure. It will extend to zero lash.

If you prefill. You are Hoping the lifter bleeds down before the cam lobe forces the valve into the piston. There is NO provision for a lifter to bleed down. It just leaks down and there is no guarantee it will in time.

A "dry" or empty lifter does NOT see friction. It's only going up and down as an assembly.

 

If your cam is set up correctly, there's zero chance of the valve hitting the piston when the lifter is "pumped up". This is why you check piston to valve clearances with lifters modified to be "solid". You want to check the clearance with the pushrod cup positioned at the uppermost point in the lifter body. If you hit a piston with a valve, it's not the fault of the lifters pumping up, it's the fact that the valvetrain clearances weren't verified and fixed when the cam was installed. This is why I ended up flycutting the pistons on my old LS1, because I didn't have enough PTV clearance on the intake.

Tossing the lifters in oil makes sure there's oil everywhere there needs to be when they're installed. I'd rather do that than waste time specifically oiling the rollers and bodies. They could be full of oil or not, it wouldn't matter. The simple act of torqueing down the rockers correctly will force most of the oil back out of them regardless.

 

FWIW I spoke to Johnson a couple months ago about their 2116LSR lifters and they specifically said do not soak them because they are prefilled with a specific fluid. He didn't say it would hurt anything if you did, just that they had special fluid. IIRC it was to keep them pumped for measuring preload. Obviously this only for Johnson's. Not sure who else does this though.

 

I have a question about Johnson 2116LSR lifters, that I can't seem to get the Johnson tech to buy into, so I'm throwing this out to you guys. Because I'm using a shaft mounted rocker system on my LS3, it is very difficult to determine zero lash (to determine needed pushrod lengths), due to very limited access to the adjustable pushrod in order to adjust it (fingers too big and the entire pushrod spins instead of just the adjustable part) while everything is bolted in place. I was eventually able to get pretty close (bolt down, measure, unbolt, measure, adjust, bolt down again, rinse, repeat....all day long). So today, I installed the custom length Manton pushrods I received, and bolted everything together.

Now for the double check on the preloading of the lifters. My method in this was to raise the installed roller tip end of each rocker at TDC above the valve tip until it became rigid (in other words, until the lifter was fully collapsed). I took this measurement, multiplied it times the inverse of the rocker arm ratio (1.73) to get a value of .581, which was then multiplied by the gap between the roller tip, and valve tip, at full lifter (piston) compression. Whatever that value is should be the difference between Johnson's ".093" piston travel, and what is actually left to compress after the precompression by the pushrod at a closed valve height with the roller in contact with the valve tip.

Let me give you an example. If a valve has .100" of gap between the valve tip, and the roller tip, with the lifter fully compressed (no oil is the assumption), then that means with the 1.72 rocker ratio, that the lifter itself is being depressed further by another .058" (.100" x .581 = .058"). If the total travel of the lifter is .093", and the remaining amount of travel on an open valve is .058", then the lifter must be at .035" of preload when the roller tip is resting on the open valve tip (.093"-.058" = .035"). Here is the rub. The Johnson tech keeps going back to the "fully pumped up lifter" process in determining the preload, when that process is nearly impossible to do properly with a limited accessible shaft rocker system when the user can't even adjust the adjustable pushrod while it is installed. Any amount of pushing on the lifter just pushes more oil out of the body.

So my question is...Why can't this (measuring using an empty lifter) be a means of determining what my preload is at, or to determined pushrod length? Yes, I'm assuming all the oil is now out of these lifters being they (brand new, never used) depress very easy up to a point, then rock solid. There is no way I'm going to pump these lifters back up only to inadvertently push the oil out again during a repeat of an entire day's work, when logic says, just measure from the bottom up, instead of from the top down, yet the tech didn't seem to want to waiver from the one-way only method. Thoughts?

 

The risk here is that your lifters being collapsed basically here…stay that way. Hydraulic pressure is a brutally strong force, but I’ve seen lifters stay compressed and have to be disassembled to get the plunger to move back up. The method is unconventional for sure here that your using. I myself hate the adjustable pushrod tools on these LS engines, because of the very things you’ve talked about…fat fingers and NO room…even without a shaft system. If this was in my shop, I’d tear it back down, soak the lifters and make sure they stay pumped up…put it back together and use a tool such as the MS Racing Components EZ checker, to find my pushrod lengths. I had them make me a couple in custom lengths, to work with most any LS engine…even aftermarket heads. Yes it’s a ton of work at this point, but I wouldn’t risk it with all the lifters being dry AND compressed here. Not sure I agree with your method and math here anyway. It MIGHT work?

 

Thanks Scott. You note my confusion on this matter. My understanding of hydraulic lifter operation was matched by what the Johnson tech said, and that was the lifter will compress (push oil out) over time if any pressure is on the piston. That to me is basic hydraulic lifter 101. He also said to pump them back up, but be VERY careful to not put any compressive pressure on them when I redo my pushrod length measurements. That's when I laughed, and said that was nearly impossible to do. So I have full confidence that the lifter will pump back up (as does the tech) when I pressurize the oil. It's just that he wouldn't even consider that measuring the remaining amount of travel that is left in the lifter, as a means of determining how much actual preloading I have at the closed valve. Its like if I have a 12oz bottle with some unknown amount of water in it, and then pour 10oz of water into the bottle to fill it up, then obviously I had 2oz of water that were in the bottle already. That is basically what I'm doing. I have some amount of preload on the lifter already. By pushing the lifter all the way to full compression (and measuring that amount) tells me how much I had in the first place.

 

Will get back to the garage this weekend hopefully, and plan on measuring every lifter's total travel from top of clip, down to the stop of the piston. If they all come out to .093", then I'm confident that with the pushrods installed, if I have .058" of travel remaining on each valve once everything is reinstalled, then I know that I have .035" of preload on the lifters once they are pumped back up.

 

@blueovalz That sounds pretty complicated. They way I, and a few others I know have measured without collapsing the lifter is to get the adjustable pushrod close (like you already have done) but make sure to leave a small gap between the rocker and valve. Use a feeler gauge to measure that gap, then measure overall length on the adjustable pushrod and add the two. Take that value and add your desired preload. Would look like this -- valve/rocker gap (.020) + adj PR length (4.300) = 4.500 + preload (.035) = 4.535 pushrod

Just my .02