[Fot] Lifter Reconditioning

[Jack W. Drews]

Trying to find a solution to this problem, I recently purchased a 
quantity of lifters from each of the major suppliers -- BPNW, Moss, 
and TRF. I had eight tappets from each supplier checked for hardness. 
I found that none of these suppliers furnish tappetts that are 
consistently in the middle 50's, Rockwell C scale.

For example, the eight I had checked from one supplier measured 45, 
48, 49, 51, 51, 52, 53, 53. The lowest reading I got on all of the 
lifters tested was 30.

In addition, some of us are going to a cam that requires a full 
diameter stock lifter. Of the three above suppliers, none of them had 
the full diameter face -- all had a chamfer around the contact end of 
the lifter that reduced its contact face diameter.

I checked with one heat treat company and they told me that chilled 
cast iron cannot be successfully nitrided so it sounds like that is 
not a possibility.

At 11:58 AM 3/15/2008, Bill Babcock wrote:
>Larry, a crown isn't proper. They call these flat lifters for a
>reason--they need to be dead flat. The cam is designed to work with a
>flat lifter. A crown will reduce the contact area and probably make
>the lifter stop rotating. A pretty sure way to toast your lifters and
>cam.
>
>second, reconditioning lifters is pretty iffy anyway. These things
>need to be as hard as they can be. Grinding them without some
>hardening process involving vile chemicals known by the state of
>california to cause instant death and an alchemist is scary. What you
>need--what we all need, is some very hard lightened lifters with very
>flat non-chamfered, non-crowned faces.
>On Mar 15, 2008, at 8:15 AM, Larry Young wrote:
>
> > Can someone recommend a shop that reconditions lifters, i.e. resurface
> > the foot of the lifter with the proper crown?  I've seen a few
> > places on
> > the web, but some seem rather expensive, e.g. Integral Cams $11.70
> > each,
> > Web Cams $5.00 each.
> > Larry Young
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>Bill Babcock
>Babcock & Jenkins
>Billb at bnj.com
>503.936.7660
>www.bnj.com
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