Building a new motor, Best Piston Rings and Lifters? Options

[RoadGlue]

Hey all,

Building a fairly mild 66 mm x 96 mm short stroke motor (heads opened up a bit, mild cam). Just looking for recommendations for rings unless whatever AA P&Cs come with are considered good enough. Also looking for good lifter recommendations too. Not going hydraulic.

Thanks!

Randy

['73-914kid]

A reground camshaft should maintain the factory hardness. When I had my cam reground by Schneider in San Diego, they recommended using OEM lifters over those manufactured by Webcam or SCAT due to possible incompatibility of cam/lifter hardness. This is something I cannot say for a fact is true, but I figured I wouldn't chance having either a cam go flat, or lifters mushroom out, so I bought new OEM lifters.

A cam blank is hardened to whatever hardness the manufacturer chooses, and if they manufacture lifters as well, one would assume that the lifter face and cam lobe hardness are matched together. I would not run OEM lifters with an aftermarket new blank cam for the reason as stated above.

Now for my "story" in regards to new manufactured OEM lifters.

I purchased a box of new Mahle lifters and did the chromoly pushrod/911 swivel feet adjuster valvetrain setup. The Mahle lifters survived break-in no problem, but failed after a period of around 1,000 miles in a place one would never expect them to fail, at the push-rod cup. During the 1,000 mile period I had to do valves 3 time and knew something was wrong. I pulled a lifter out at one point to verify that face wasn't smearing, and it definitely was not. Nothing visually looked wrong, and I was stumped. I finally decided to remove all of them and figure out what was wrong, and it turned out that the pushrod cup on the lifter was sinking in to the body of the lifter substantially. I have a picture around here somewhere that shows how much the pushrod wore into the lifter, but it was a solid 1/2 inch on some lifters.

I then went and purchased a set of FEBI lifters (a sub-company of Bilstein). On type 4 lifters with the Parkerizing, it is really obvious how far the heat treating has occurred away from the lifter face, and the FEBI lifter face heat treatment was probably 1/2 inch farther up into the body of the lifter. My best guess as to why the lifters failed was that the entire body of the lifter may not have been properly case hardened after final machining, which left the pushrod cup softer than it should have been, or perhaps significantly softer than new chromoly pushrod tips.

The FEBI lifters have worked flawlessly for me the 2 years or so I ran the motor as a daily driver, and continues to run great for Mike.

See, told you it was a long story (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

BTW, this is only my experience, and I cannot say it will always ring true for every single situation. For all I know, I could have gotten a bad batch of lifters from Mahle, or there was some other issue at play that would cause this to have occurred. I'm sure others, maybe even Jake, will chime in with advice and stories, but I do know that a lot of type 1 guys have had quality issues with the Mahle lifters.

[Kansas 914]

The FEBI lifters have worked flawlessly for me the 2 years or so I ran the motor as a daily driver, and continues to run great for Mike.

See, told you it was a long story (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Ethan is correct - that motor continues to run great. I am getting in it right now and driving to lunch and won't hesitate to drive from Durango to Moab in September for the Red Rock Classic.