There are 4 lifter guides. I drilled 1/2" holes in the top side of mine to help oil drain back. I upgraded my lifters to the Comp R's because I went with the AFR 8019 spring upgrade and that is what AFR recommends to go with that spring. If you were still using the stock spring I don't realy see any problem with keeping the stock lifters. Then again the Comp R's were only about 220 bucks. That is prety cheap compared to a new cam and new cam berings and everything else you would have to replace if something goes wrong.

 

Do you have pictures of which part you would drill? Would the holes have to be prety equal in all of the guides, to make sure that the oil flow is prety even? When you order the lifter guides from GM, they send you 5 guides..weird.

 

I am having the same done to my car. My car has 70,k miles on it though, so replacing the lifters is aomething I wanted to do anyway.

 

Let me see if I have some pics for ya. If I do I'll PM you for your e-mail. I tried to put the holes as close to the middle of the guide as possable and about 3/4" above the bottom of the inside of the guide.

 

If your bearings were that messed up you may have had other problems to cause such damage. You should probably have the lifter bores honed if the lifters were scratched.

Were the lifter cups/trays (same thing) damaged at all? If the cam was burned then you had oil pressure issues. Be sure that all the oil passages are not blocked and you thorougly clean the block/oil pickup screen and put a new oil pump in. Otherwise you risk having the same thing happen again.

When I got my lifter cups from gmpartsdirect.com they were $2.50 each (+their handling fee) but they only come in packs of 5 for some reason.

I drilled out my old clifter , but I wouldn't whole heartedly recommend it unless you have time to spare. You really have to clean up the holes that were drilled to make sure there are no loose pieces that are going to break off and possibly cause damage.

Ben

 

Can i see the pics as well?
Thanks

 

Is it neccesary to drill holse into the lifter cups to reinstall them properly?

 

It isn't necessary to drill the lifter cups. The reasoning behind it is they hold alot of oil. When you drill the holes in them, it allows the excess oil to drain back down over your cam and back in the oil pan so it can circulate better.

 

There are a couple of LS1 / GenIII engine performance books on EBay ( or where ever).
Get them. Loaded with all that kind of info.