Flat Tapped Hydraulic Lifters
The exercise in futility continued. I pulled out the lifters part number VL-67RH one by one and of course one is rusted, the others seem ok, or are they? First of all I finally learned there are four types of lifters. You tell them apart by what types of tops or bottoms they have.
For our inconvenience the names the industry uses could not be more difficult to follow.
Here are the terms as they make sense to me. First of all tapped means lifter and lifter means tapped.
When it comes to the bottoms there are two kinds, flat or roller, period. Flat means metal cylinder chunk the size of your thumb. Roller means there is a wheel or a roller on the bottom of the lifter. I think up until 1985 the Ford 289/302 small block used a flat tapped camshaft and then it switched to the roller camshaft in 1986.
When it comes to the top they can be solid or hydraulic, but that would be too easy so some places call solid [wait for it] mechanical! Say what? That's right mechanical to me means it does something it moves or it spins, or it clicks, etc, but in this case it means metal cylinder chunk basically a metal stick the size of your thumb, it does nothing. Hydraulic should be called self adjusting, (do you hear me automobile engineers) if your label needs a label it is NOT a good label!
So if you say to me that is a hydraulic lifter I will ask you what the hell do you mean hydraulic, but if you say that's a self adjusting lifter I will say, yup sure is, pass the beer.
Which brings us to the 64 million dollar question(s) (hold pinky to corner of mouth Dr. Evil style) How can you test a hydraulic lifter? Or can you test a hydraulic lifter? Or how do you know when a hydraulic lifter is bad?
See in my case I have two things going on with my lifters. Some of them I can set on my workbench, take an old push rod and press down on them and they give about 1/8th of an inch, others do not? So are the ones that move up and down a little bit the good ones, or are the ones that don't go up and down the good ones? Phrased differently should hydraulic lifters move at all?
There are only 16 lifters in my 289 V8 however I am showing 24 below to show you how I numbered them with a sharpy on their buttoms.