Engine rebuild time? Options

[burlybryan]

I've been doing an economical "freshening up" of a used 2.0 engine with good compression (but unknown history) with hopes of not splitting the case for a full rebuild. I have it torn down to a short block and pulled the lifters/tappets. 4 look flat and nice, 3 are noticeably dished/concave and one is concave with some galling or pitting around the perimeter. Pics attached of one of the concave lifters and the one with the perimeter damage. Common knowledge would say that the lifters and cam are not salvageable, but I wanted to hear it from the 914World audience. Would you guys re-use these and roll the dice or pull the trigger on machine work and new components?

If the latter, anyone have recommendations for a shop in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I'd rather not use Further Performance or Auto Edge. There's a small shop named Midwest Vee that reportedly does rebuilds on air cooled.

Thanks.

Bryan

[930cabman]

Dished lifters are not optimal, but can you return them into their original locations? If so, I would consider running it or open it up and go all the way

[mepstein]

Dished lifters are not optimal, but can you return them into their original locations? If so, I would consider running it or open it up and go all the way

I agree. If you are going in to fix things, it’s not usually worth doing half the engine. My thought is to run it until it’s not running right but when you do decide to work on it, start from scratch and build it right. You don’t want to install a new cam and lifters just to have a bearing give out 1k down the road.