Hi,
Finally get the 2.2 installed in my 73. I needed to get the 44idf carbs adjusted and and valve train was making a lot of noise. I took it back to the engine builder yesterday to have these adjustments made. I get a call from them this morning saying that they have to take the engine back apart because the cam had been worn down. Something about bad lifters! This on an egnine that cost me $7000.00 and had LESS THAN 20 MILES ON IT. These folks are supposed to be THE VW engine builders on the west coast. So now I have to go back up to their shop, drive the car home, remove the engine and bring it back up to them. Sorry to rant here but my wife is tired of hearing about the car.
Elliot

FAT PERFORMANCE

[QUOTE]. why is all of that your responsibility? they wouldn't spring for the tow atleast? you didn't get a turnkey for $7000? bet the wife is pissed. sorry for your misfourtune.

kevin

must be all that rtv on the pushrod tubes.

sorry dude. better luck on the second go around.

rant on. . it will make you feel mo betta.

Well, That sucks.

There was a tread on STF about lifters and the fact that Johnson was no longer making lifters for WebCam. Two or three motors ate up the cams. Because of this I decided to go ceramic. Don't know if works any better. Do know it is more expensive.

Carlos

fly up and sit on my deck if you want to. SERENITY NOW!!

kevin

Why is this happening so frequently?


M

Hi,
I can drive the car OK. The cam isn't worn down totally but it won't get any better. I'll be able to get it home today. I should have the engine out tomorrow sometime. It's justs a pita to have to go through all this again. I have floor jacks and hand tools so it will take a little time. It should go quicker than last time since I have a little practice now. Hey, maybe this is a good excuse to buy more tools! They don't like to work on cars. They're just engine builders. At least they will make it good. I suppose they could have said nothing and sent me home with it that way and let me figure it out myself. I better at least get a free "T" shirt or something for all this trouble.
Cheers, Elliot

Thanks for the offer Kevin. I retire in 2years 8months ( but who's counting). My wife likes the Pacific NW so we may end up there. We visited the San Juans and a few of the smaller towns in the area and kinda liked it. My problem is, if it gets below 50 degress F. I lose conciousness. Anyways keep a spot open on your deck for me and I'll bring the wine, beer, whatever.
Cheers, Elliot

Hum... 2 engines in 2 weeks.

I just received a new cam and lifters from WEB.

When are we going to start holding them accountable ??


B

This makes 4 Type-IV engines (Web) I can count from here, plus 2 factory.

In.. 7 months? WHAT?


M

Hi,
I just got the car home and will start pulling the engine out. I spoke with Ron at Fat Performance and he told me he spoke with other engine builders who have experienced the same problems. WTF is going on with these lifters and cams? Are they made in some 3rd world country or what? Does anybody do quality control anymore? I told them if they wanted to upgrade the lifters I would gladly pay for them. He said he used the best. If those are the best I don't know if I will ever have a decent running engine in this car!! Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any nondestructive testing for these parts. Apparently you have to destroy the part to find out if it is any good. Twenty miles on a brand new engine and the cam and lifters are shot. Un-freakin-believable. At first I was pissed off at the people who built the engine but the folks at Fat Performance are at the mercy of their vendors like everyone else I guess. Anyway they are standing by their work and I'll try to have the engine back to them tomorrow.
More later, Elliot

Now I'm getting nervous. I have a sweet (so I think) Web Cam and when I went to pick it and the lifters up, one of the main ladys there took back the lifters the stock boy brought out and swapped them for the Johnsons because she said they were better. WTH? I'm at stroke level at work and it'll be my hobby/sickness that pushes me over!

I thought the last batch of Johnson lifters was the problem, then they went out of business. I read at STF that the replacements that Web says are good are two piece, made by Moroso?. Web Cams has a very good reputation and I don't think they want to damage that by continuing to sell inferior parts. Jake Raby switched to someone else's lifters when this shit started. Don't know if he went back to what Web is selling or not. I'm planning to shell out the $$ for the ceramic ones on the next engine.

I need to have questions about my new_new engine.... I need to know if I need to change these before I roll it.

Shit

M

Very interesting that this problem has been occurring all over (i.e. FAT too). Ottos has had extreme lobe wear on a few recent low mile engines too. I saw one of the cams and it was unbelieveable. One lobe was essentially GONE after only like 7K miles. It was a factory cam but not sure whose lifters and other bits -- prolly factory too knowing JW. He will only use aftermarket parts if they are undeniably superior or if the real thing is unobtainium at any price, LOL.

Hi,
Do I understand correctly that it is the lifters that are causing most of the problem? Not necessarily the cam? I just don't understand how this can happen so fast. Fat Performance had the engine on the dyno for 15 minutes and I drove it a total of about 20 miles. What kind of metal do they make these things out of? I'll be bringing the engine back to them tomorrow. I was told that next time they will leave it on the dyno much longer. Gonna just let it runnnn. I'll be in the Peoples Republic of China next week. (Probly were the damn lifters came from). I'll be gone all week so maybe it will be ready to install when I get back. I was hoping to drive it up to Ventura. Now maybe I'll just drive it around the block for the first 5000 miles!!
Cheers, Elliot

Elliott,

These are the mechanical lifters sold by web?

Those mentioned by Brad earlier are mine!!

I hope they are ok. Should I call Web?


Brad, is there a lot number on the box/packaging for the lifters?

Mine went @ 4800 miles, but the builder says bad gas killed mine, sounded like a cam before I shipped it, it sounded like the first lobe, behind the fan.



M

Elliot..it is the lifters. If the hardness of the lifter doesnt match the cam... the lifter wears the cam out PRONTO. I had this exact same problem back in 1996 or so with Web cam and their lifters. I would imagine this is a problem with the heat treater and not the actual manufacturer of the lifters/cam.

It has me scared. I have a lot of engine builds coming up.


B

I liked it before, when there were enough cars here to drive them til they broke, and get another one....

I think it's time for the engine swap, I can't sleep.



M

Hi,
Sorry to cause any sleepless nights over this but I didn't know it was a wide spread problem. This is total bullshit and someone has to take some reponsibility here. I don't care who manufactures these things or who sells them, they are all responible for the product. Maybe we can get a class action thing going here. I'll call my lawyer. They don't call him "Mad Dog" for nothing. I hope to see some of you in Ventura.
Cheers, Elliot

take the cam and lifters and check the surface hardness before you or the engine builder installs them.

my brother had a 454 ate three 'matched' cam kits from competion cams. mucho expensive.

Just a thought but would those nifty hi-$ Ceramics solve these problems?

Arrrgh,,, I just had a cam and new lifters installed in my teener,, gonna have to get with my mechanic and ask him about this. I'll print up this thread and have him give it a read. Arrrgh

How much was that, if you don't mind?


M

Here look at my '67 orange sparkle lefty on a security cam to calm down a bit.




M

Are you sure its secure sitting upside down in that chair?

I think thats a glamour shot. I have a G & L Legacy and a PRS Hollowbody. Dr Z Maz 38 with two NOS Celestion Silvers. And a early Silverface Champ

Yep Rich.. the ceramic lifters would stop all this.



B

The strat is safe, it's got some battle scars from being spun on a floor, and slammed all over the blues..


So, what do I need to do about my engine that is going to be here Tuesday? Should I crack it, and change the lifters before I start it?

This sucks tremendously, I don't have the time to deal with another blown up motor, and I am in this one maybe $8k now..

I am fucking pissed off, and paranoid. Better off with a damned core, and a piece of shit car with an unknown history, and 0000019 showing..


Miles

Run it. If it pukes... we start a class action with Elliot. NO JOKE. The person who built your engine should be running these things prior to shipping anyway. One of the engines in the past that I had this happen too.. I fired it on the floor to break in the cam and noticed a ton of noise coming from it.. checked the valves and found a couple of them WAY loose. So.. I saved my self the headache of pulling it again. I do recall rebuilding a engine twice before I threw the case away when it went bad a third time. Ketp blaming it on the case.


B

We need a chat applet.

The first engine was broken-in for me, 600-700 miles..

When I got it, I noticed a noise in the front of the engine, we (me and my mech) decided without much inspection it was coming from the fan area... confusing, but benign enough for that moment.

I hope the cam has been seasoned, I'd hate for those lifters to eat a meal that expensive, and have it taste like shit.



M

I do have a chat applet (www.all914.com)

Can you prove that it had 600-700 miles on it ?? Did you see the mileage being put on the car (or did you put the mileage on it ?)


B

Can I prove it? No.

Do I believe it had run 500 miles? Yes, I was told it was.

Is anyone interested in a 0 mile engine? Make a resaonable offer that includes a running engine.

Built by the best, for the best money work can buy.... yeah, I feel good, if not inconfident.

Uhhg... I feel sick.


M

Not to hijack this thread but this sort of reminded me of a situation I suffered when I delt with a character from Tahachapi (sp) a short while back
After looking localy I decided to use ..him.
This was before I new of Raby or Brad or any of the many helpful people on this board.
Long and short of it evan though I was provided a "Video" of supposedly MY motor being run on a bench, When it arrive here nice and neat on a pallet needless to say as soon as it was installed it was all wrong.. after trying in vain to CONTACT the MF'er I ended up tearing it down to find a shit pile A roached crank, Severly re-welded heads and mismatched cam and lifters. Like you Miles I just swallowed hard and rebuilt it right nearly doubling my costfigureing its better to have an expensive runner than a useless pile.
But now I am happy.. just ask Geoff It runs pretty darn fine.

I have a 40 piece Vietnamese socket set, about 10 minutes a week to work on my engine building skills, and a big sky to work under...



Jeah, I am in here alot, I live arms length from computers, and upstairs. My garage is a tree covered dirt corner in the back yard.

I drove my new 2.0 for a month before deciding it would last the year it would take to restore the other car, and tore the other car down to pieces/parts. Now, Mr. Genius has no running car.

I'm 38, that only happens to 18 year olds neophytes! Working sporadically is also taking a big toll..

Fuck.


M

Hi,

Could be lifter bores? Or is it a chicken before the egg question? See this thread
Lifter Bore

Raises more questions than it answers.

Ceramics and machining were $429+shipping to LN $50 round trip. Better safe than sorry.


Carlos

76 2270 Not going to make Labor Day startup. Waiting to receive case. 9/14 seems to be the next best date.

Well, you can't rule it out, only on a case by case basis.. Hey, I made a funny. ha ha.

I hate to be different than everyone else, but my problems are with factory sets.

IF I have this problem again, I am going to spray paint the builder's name up the side, cover it with gas, light it on fire, drive it into the Savannah river, and record it. Maybe the club could use it as a flash/splash page.

Oh yeah.



M

Thereare MANY contributing factors to flat cams and dead lifters......I still only have had ONE bad cam out of 400+ from web. we build one engine per week and it gets 8 hours of dyno time......
The lifters I use are not the same as FAT....The guysat FAT are good guys. Theyare just like me. We can only inspect so much....sometimes we get screwed by parts!

The ceramic lifters ELIMINATE cam failures by having different wear characteristics than any metal....

BTW, I had the first full street engine to use ceramic lifters like these, it was my 227BHP TI engine for my beetle..

Anything special have to be done to use ceramic lifters, for just a street car?

They have raised pushrod cup heights, when compared to stock lifters, so you'll need to reset your pushrod geometry with some cut-to-length pushrods.

Charles Navarro
LN Engineering
http://www.LNengineering.com
Aircooled Precision Performance

oh crap. i may have the dead cam issue. I noticed valve noise so i adjusted the valves...none were more than .001 off. so i fixed the valves and i still have noise....

is there a way i can tell w/o dropping engine or splitting case????

You can pull the rockers and pushrod tubes out then fish the lifter out. Total PITA if the engine is in the car but do-able. Most times with flat cam the valve adjustment is way out of wack.

I'm going with ceramics. I'm telling customers to use ceramics or I will not cover the labour cost on flat cams. I just tell them the poop right up front. The old lifter's are at best a crap shoot.

Aaron dood.. if the cam goes flat, you know it. You wouldn't be able to adjust the valves, *and* have the car run (hardly).. it turns into a fuming lopey mess.

Congrats! Unless it's just starting to let go in the last 13 miles, you seem 'ok'. Valves make noise, it's what valves do.


M

I'll be making a BIG post on the STF either late today, or tomorrow about this entire out of control cam and lifter issue. It is getting VERY scary on lifterland these days.

is the lifter issue a problem across the range of applications or only for our engines? you would think the manufacturer(s) would be all over this problem.

kevin

"oh crap. i may have the dead cam issue. I noticed valve noise so i adjusted the valves...none were more than .001 off. so i fixed the valves and i still have noise...."


ONe thing you should check before you assume a bad cam, is the side play on the rocker arms. If you have to much side play you will still get valve train noise. With the valves adjusted PROPERLY roll the engine up to TDC for each cylinder and try and slide the rocker back and forth if you have more than a couple of thousandths you will have racket. You m,ay also try and adjust the valves a little tighter than the specs, I would only go about .001 or so at a time though and you will need to be much more diligent about checking your valves.

Don't assume right away that you have a cam that was wiped out if you have some valve train noise. Do a couple of vavle adjust and play with your rocker end play first. Then look more closely.

I have a new cam I designed coming from Web in a week or so an I will be using their lifters but I will also test them for hardness and talk with Web and Make sure they will back me if these lifters should wipe out my cam.

Brett is correct. Rockers can wear ne get noisy and the side loading makes a clacking sound.

Jake said somewhere that he purposely floated the valves in a test to abuse the ceramics, and there were no problems.

I made this post yesterday on Pelican....

I have intentionally floated the lifters severely with no issues. as you will read below if you float your valves, someone either can't drive, doesn't have a rev limiter, or has mis figured their valve mass.


----------------------------------------
I built the VERY FIRST aircooled street engine to EVER use these lifters- it was a Type I.

Go to my website at www.aircooledtechnology.com and look in my archives for my burnot video with that engine installed in my Blue Bug. That burnout lasted for over 2.5 minutes and I saw constant revs over 7500 RPM. The tach sat at 9,000 RPM for atleast 5 solid seconds. If you listen closely to the engine I miss 2 shifts and you can hear valve float. That was probably well over 9,500 RPM (thats where my valves were calculated to float with the mass of the valve train and the spring tensions used and matched to the camshaft profile) My memoory tach bumped over 10K 3 times!

The same engine was dynoed for 2 solid days when I assembled it and I PURPOSELY FLOATED THE VALVES TO TEST THE LIFTERS ON THE DYNO! since the lifters are the heaviest part of the valvetrain, lightening them is key to making higher revs using less spring tension. This engine made 230 BHP on my dyno- I drove the hell out of it, and now I have sold it, and it still runs great.

Shawn Geers, a well known VW dragracer had a failure with these lifters 4-5 years ago. From what I see his engine was not set up correctly for them and he severely floated his valves.

A correctly configured engine will retain valve control atleast 2K RPM over its powerband. If you can float the valves that easily, don't even build another engine till you figure how to calculate valvetrain mass, and understand the purposes of lighter components, and their important role in valve control.

I think enough about these lifters to put my reputation behind them 100%. I have seen what they can do, and put them to the test. I have torn race engines down using them that had ZERO CAM OR LIFTER WEAR AFTER A FULL SEASON OF 7,000 RPM TWISTING.

Building an engine with ceramics is noticeably different, it even turns by hand easier! Hell I have used 3 DIFFERENT CAMSHAFTS with the SAME set of lifters trying to free UP HP in ONE engine. hat WILL NEVER happen with a conventional lifter.

Guess what Formula 1 series valves are made of??? You got it, ceramics! Guess where the ceramic technology came from- Formula 1 in the earlier days.

If you want flames, I will happily provide the facts that will extinguish your fire. Sir, before doubting components- Test them yourself, or listen to those who have and can provide you with the accurate, first hand information to support their feelings.


These lifters run quieter, last indefinately, are lighter, don't go flat, the pushrod caups are made into them, and are located higher on the lifter for a shorter pushrod to be used which also makes the valvetrain lighter. The lifters have a smaller oil passage incorporated into them to reduce the amount of oil taht ends up in the rocker boxes. Stock dumps way too much in that area. heck, the engine don't even need a cam break in. Just fire it up and let it idle!

If they had ZERO benefits other than the fact that they didn't go flat I'd still use them!! If they cost 600 bucks per engine I'd still buy them for mine!

Until you have had a cam go flat, you don't kniow what the pain feels like. When it happens you just bought all new bearings, and an oil pump, and pssibly a crankshaft as well, since all that cast iron will extrude hone the engine internals. May as well dump 2 handfulls of silica sand in the oil sump- its the same difference.

The cam is the second assembly that drops into the engine. Its the second to last to be removed in a tear down.

Is it worth 400 bucks to ENSURE that you don't have to go back into that engine for a cam issue- HELL YES!


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