I don't disagree, but I think you will also find the CTS-V has an extremely light valve train.

 

True. I will be using a set of 03 LS6 heads with stock valves, Comp 918s with titanium retainers, and a set of HS rebuilt stock rockers. I can't believe how light the retainers are, it's amazing. It seems to be about the lightest valvetrain setup possible.

If after 2k miles my caddy lifters take a dump on me, this board will be the first hear all about it.

 

i dont have any pics yet. ill get around to it. been busy taking it apart/ planning for the next motor.

 

I put the Cadillac lifters in my 408 and so far have no problems. I have about 1500 miles on the engine. I set my preload at .060 as stated by SDPC who I bought them from. Sorry about your loss.

NEW GM Performance Parts Hydraulic Roller Lifter for LS-Engines
#SD8689 $217.85/set

You heard it first from SDPC! This new lifter will work in all LS- engine applications and is specifically suited for race cams and high RPM applications. They can also be used as an upgrade for stock lifters and are suitable for street applications. These lifters were developed for the CTSV Cadillac Race Team that used the “short stroke” LS7 style engines that raced in the Grand Am Cup Series during 2005. If you recall these engines were built using the LS7 block, LS7heads, and LS7 intake but the sanctioning body required the teams to meet the 5.7-liter engine size of 346ci. There were several different combinations tried but most of these engines used a stroke of approximately 3.200”. The demand to make race winning horsepower with a short stroke guarantees the unavoidable element of high RPM’s.
Initial testing, before these new lifters were developed, showed a definite valvetrain stability problem above 7000-rpm’s. Several remedies were tried, but in the end it was determined that the lifter had the biggest contribution to the RPM limit. This new lifter has internal changes made to the hydraulic components which resulted in a significant RPM increase. After installing the new lifters, these engines were now making power at 8000-rpm and they regularly saw 8500-rpm’s without any problems! WOW! The CTSV dominated the first races, not only did the sanctioning body enforce an RPM limit on the short stoke Caddies but they eventually implemented more restrictions to limit the horsepower on these LS7 equipped 346ci engines.
As a reminder, hydraulic roller cam valvetrain stability is a function of many different variables; camshaft design (ramp acceleration), pushrods, valve springs, rocker ratios, spring pressures, valve weight, the weight of all valvetrain components, oil pressure, RPM, etc. It is imperative that you have sufficient spring pressures, quality push rods and lifters, proper lash adjustment, and the lightest valvetrain components you can afford to maintain accurate stability at high RPM’s. Match your components to meet your RPM range!
We recommend a preload setting of 0.060” (cold) with these lifters, in most cases with adjustable rockers this is usually somewhere between 1-full turn and 1-1/2 from the “Zero-Lash” point. This is the same preload as a stock lifter!

 

I am very sorry to hear of your problems, and the hard work and money it will take to rectify. I also have purchased a set from SDPC last fall.... have not got motor all together yet, so I can't say if they will be O.K. or not. Hope I don't have any problem like this, and likewise for anyone else. The name Katech should say it all, as they are one of the best around, and probably were instrumental in the development of these lifters for the C6R program. If your trays weren't worn (And they shouldn't have been), it doesn't mean that the plastic material didn't somehow become brittle, and maybe shattered from the loading of the now brittle material. Since your oil pressure was cool, it would seem that this factor could be eliminated. It IS entirely possible that you plain and simple got a batch of bad lifters. I agree with Predator that it is hard to believe that they all went at once, but it COULD have been a chain reaction/domino effect and when one lifter went bad, it could have taken out another, then another, etc.. This possibility becomes even more likely when you consider that you said you lost the intake AND exhaust BOTH on the same cylinder at the SAME TIME. This one will haunt some of the members here, including me, for some time. As I have said, I too have purchased a set of these. This may be one problem that is NEVER completely found. I hope I am wrong about that, but time will tell. How sad.

 

Who manufactures these lifters for GM?

 

I have a set of Caddy lifters coming out. The #8 cam lobe was worn and one of the lifters on #3 was stuck in the bore and gouged. But I also had a rev-kit with springs keeping the lifters preloaded against the lobes.

I need to dig up the respective Morel and Crane part numbers to help me decide if I stay with the Caddy or switch.

 

I was hopeful that someone had found a definitive answer/solution/cure, etc.. I would agree with Vettenuts, and go with Eaton as the likely supplier/vendor. I have my Caddy lifters in now, and with the motor on a stand and the easier access to seeing all the components, I can't see them dropping down out of the tray due to a small base circle on THE COMP CAM I AM RUNNING. THAT may be key here. I guess that some cams may be ground with a REALLY SMALL base circle, and the lifters COULD drop enough to become disengaged with the trays, or even far enough down so that they generate far more "leverage" on the tray than in a stock application. But I am having a hard time buying this theory. I still have not fired my motor, but hope to by the end of May. I DO know that I checked my old trays (They had 30 thou on 'em) and when compared to the new ones I installed, the new Caddy's were DAMN AWFUL LOOSE in the old trays as compared to the new ones. I actually had to push fairly hard to get the lifters started up into the new trays, and the old trays were a cinch to install the Caddy's into. These trays are only some sort of plastic material. And when you are running stock spring pressures with under .500 lift (As far as the LS1's go, only the 2000 C5's and and '98-'00 F cars had .500 lift-all other LS1's had less, with some years having "only" as little as .467 lift-SOURCE: Will Handzel's "How to build High Performance Chevy LS1-LS6 V-8's") and, say, 200 degrees duration@.050 lift, like the trays "see" in a stock application, they can, and do, last 100,000+ miles. I wonder if these same trays may be failing in some of the extreme situations we are subjecting them to with the nasty cams and stiff springs we run. Maybe?? In my case, AFR had improperly set-up my early (VERY) issued 225 heads by setting the installed height at 1.670!!! It should have been 1.770-1.800, according to Tony. I broke 2 valvesprings within 300 miles. In a discussion with Tony, he stated that they were having some issues with the REV valvesprings that I had "upgraded" to and he recommended installing some Comp 921's. Neither of us knew, at that point, the installed height was that far off. As a result, the installed height was assumed to be correct and was NOT re-checked. After I installed the 921's, I never had another problem-ALMOST!! While I never had another problem with broken springs, and that is nothing short of a miracle in itself when you consider the springs were being lifted to within a few thou of coil bind every time they opened, the excessive spring pressure started wiping out one cam lobe and prematurely wore out my cam bearings (Hey-when you think about it, if the springs were installed .100 too stiff/short, the cam lobes were seeing the same spring pressure that a .700+ lift hydraulic roller would produce-for over 30,000 miles-before the lobe was wiped out!!!). So, my trays probably should have been kinda "loose" considering the installed height issues!! BUT... I NEVER had any lifter issues, or broken trays. AND.... I ran stock 1987-up SBC roller lifters!!! That's right.... according to Lingenfelters and Wheel to Wheel, among others, the stock LS1 roller lifters are IDENTICAL to the 1987 and newer "traditional" SBC lifters!!! And I never had a problem under this kind of EXTREME usage. I even ran this 427 Darton motor all the way to California and back-in temperatures that reached 120 degrees F!!! At 10:30 A.M. one morning in California about 50 miles from Death Valley, the temp on my C5's readout showed 116 degrees!!!!! And we drove it hour after hour with the oil temp showing 240 degrees and the coolant temp was at 245!!!! We had NO problems, lifters or otherwise. In closing, it could have been defective lifters, or damage from shipping or mis-handling, defective steel, etc. OR....maybe, just maybe, one of the trays failed, a lifter rotated, and in short order a chain reaction grenaded a few more lifters. I DO hope we can somehow pinpoint what did happen, for all of us to learn from. I do not believe that it was an oiling problem, or why wouldn't a rod bearing go out first? Or ALL the lifters fail?? I am almost afraid to wind out my motor after I get it fired up!! Vettenuts, I have to dis-agree with you on the encapsulated lifter being weaker that the open roller. If you tie the two "tangs" together by totally encircling them, the laws of physics say that it would be more rigid. BUT-this would only be true when comparing the same brand of lifter with ALL other things being equal. I do believe that the Morel lifter, if it is indeed an "open" roller design, could be stronger than the G.M. lifter even though the G.M. lifter is encapsulated. This could be due to superior steel being used, or other design differences/superior engineeering, etc.. Sure hope we can find out WHY these lifters took a dump!

 

My statement on encapsulated lifters is based on observations of how much material there is in the Morel vs. the Caddy's around the roller. OD is fixed in both cases.

 

You bring up other valid points, and these are some of the reasons I don't like the "hole in the lifter tray" mod. I wonder if it is known if any of the later engine (LS2, LS3, LS7, LS9) lifter trays will fit and known to be stronger (i.e, thicker, different material, different section properties, etc.).

 

I have a new set of Caddy liftersnon my workbench waiting to go in. I noticed gthat the cup or pushrod seat on the OEM LS1 lifters are deeper by about 2mm than the Caddy lifters. It seems to me like the Caddy lifters may need shorter pushrods than the OEMs for proper valvetrain geometry. It would seenm to me that if Caddy lifters are used with 7.400" OEM pushrods, especially with aftermarket agressie cams, that lifter failure coud very well happen especially if the cylinder head and cylinder head valves come into contact.

Has anybody given some thougts about the relation between pushrod lenght ans Caddy lifter failure?

Off course, the Caddy's did not have any problems at Daytona; but, then again, the engine builders for those cars do measure pushrod lenght requirements. If you go ahead and replace the OEM's with some Caddy's just because you heard they are better without checking pushrod lengths for your particular application...

I just wonder... any related experience with different lenght pushrods? I hear some people saying that as a rule of thumb caddy lifters need at least 0.050" shorter pushrods than OEM's. In my case I am going to meassure with a pushrod length checker for pushrod lenght.

 

I just installed mine and I use the 7.4 pushrods. I used a length checker after soaking the lifters for 2 days in oil b4 installing them, and checked the length. Without actually running the car to fully pump them up, I saw that it could use some longer pushrods, and I have an aftermarket cam in my car too. Most aftermarket cams are ground on a smaller base circle to achieve the lift and duration anyway aren't they?

 

With the caddy lifters installed in my setup I used a little bit lighter preload of .040 and this is with a LQ9 decked .006" (note both my new LQ9 blocks were warpped) and a shave on L92 heads to get saw tooth pattern gone. I came up with 7.325" length pushrods. I bracket race about every weekend, to give you a idea I made 8 passes last night and I spin mine to 6900 rpms on shifts (have taken to 7200 rpms a couple of times) with no problems, and I have about 6,000 miles on this engine. So far so good?

 

pre load was measured on these. it was at .060. i know have ls7 lifters which are ls1 replacements so we will see how they do.

 

I'm confused.

Anyway I looked @ the morels and the Crane's. Not sure where they're @ now but the cranes were the most expensive @ that time. I ended up goin with Lunati cuz @ that time all the information @ that time led to the Morels and the Lunati's being the same lifter. Had mine to 7k many times with no probs. yet "knocks on wood". Little over 1500 miles on the motor thus far. The LS7 and Caddy lifter were a new thing then and just wanted to wait and see how they performed.

 

am another victim of these 2000 miles and about 4 of them went ruined the cam gonna pull the motor and see the damage can anyone figure out how to make a claim against the general for these i see a pattern developing going solid roller now **** all this ****

 

on the adjusting side of the cade lifters i have a lt1 95 have like 3,000 on it with what is in my Sig . i set my lifters at 1/4 turns after the tick was gone . I see where some say gm said 1 to 1 1/2 after 0 lash and cold have been working fine a minor valve tran noise wandering if i should readjust them when cold and to the 1 to 1 1/2 setting was recommended this setting by a guy at gm that said he used then at this setting before with good results .now i am second guessing this. I see most of you guys are using ls1 s not lt1s any info on this would be grateful

 

One and a half turns after 0 lash? That seems like a lot of preload.

 

i see some one sad every 1/4 turn equals .020 prelude is this right.so then 1/2 turns are right

 

the 1/ 1/2 was posted her earlier in this thread