Misplaced Lifters, Now What?

[BlueShift]

I more or less have my 3.4 longblock all together, and it'll be time to put my camtowers in place. The only problem is that one of them fell over on my workbench and scattered the lifters! I have no clue which one goes in which hole now, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Conventional wisdom says I'll smear a cam lobe or two if I try tossing them back in like that. Machine shop says to apply a bunch of assembly lube, and idle at 1500+ rpm for half an hour, and start praying. What do you guys think? Am I SOL, or do you think that if I lube it good and then go through a cam breakin process that I'll be ok? These motors have FAT lobes with very large surface area on both the lobe and lifter, and they're bathed in oil in normal operation. I figure that it probably stacks in my favor.

Sappy, I noticed that you've played with lifters before, notably your lightweight lifters. What do you think? If it doesn't make it, my plan B is to do reground cams with lightweight lifters, but I don't have the money for it at the moment.

[SappySE107]

RE: Misplaced Lifters, Now What?

It honestly doesn't even matter. I mean, sure, it does, if you wanna follow what everyone says is best but I have failed this many times and had no issues. You can thank the cam design for that, the lobes are cut on the base side to cause the lifter to spin vs most flat tappets that have non flat face which causes them to spin. Its this part of the pushrod flat tappets that makes them necessary to stay on the same lobe as its a wear pattern. You won't have that with these engines.

[BlueShift]

Wow, so you've done it too huh? That's very reassuring to hear. I wanna get the motor assembled, broken in, and bugs worked out. Then later once I pass the California BAR examination (my engine is going into an 87 Fiero GT 5 speed), I'm planning on possibly going with reground cams and your lightweight lifters - just pull the cam carriers, reassemble with hi-po parts and plunk them on, hopefully. Literally can't afford to do it at the moment, however. Any point in high idling (1500 rpm) for a half hour just to be sure any misplaced lifters reseat? Thanks for the advice!

[SappySE107]

Just make sure the lifters aren't scratched up, thats about it. Use moly grease to hold them in place when you put them back in, and put some on the face just to be safe. You don't need to do the 1500 RPM thing for 30 minutes. I just let my car idle for 10 minutes to get the oil pumped up into the lifters. They will probably clatter like all hell when you first get it running, but thats normal.