my mechanic told me that when he rebuilt my car, he replaced my lifters. now im starting to doubt him since i popped my valve covers and noticed that he hasn't done certain things to my car that he was supposed to. im going to take off my intake tomorrow to look at my lifters to see if they're stock lifters, or aftermarket lifters that he said he ordered. how would i be able to tell if my lifters are the lifters that came stock in my 1990 iroc-z? thanks for all the help guys

 

Well you can see if they are roller lifters at least.

 

Yea....really hard to not be able to tell. Basically, if you have the 8-legged factory phenomenom known as the lifter-retainer-spider-piece-of-metal-making-things-far-more-complex-than-they-need-to-be then you have factory roller lifters.

 

Not exactly, you can tell that they are stock style lifters that way but you can't really tell what they are. Now you could pull all of them out and look for numbers.

 

only a few people make lifters, lot of people put them in thier box and sell them. you'd be hard pressed to tell gm from comp lifters.

 

ok... i pulled out the intake and guess what i found? 2 different types of lifters...

can you tell which one's the stocker?

 

The one on the left is a factory lifter.

 

are you sure? i just went to discount auto right now with the two lifters and the one on the left matches the one they sell at discount auto. i know my mechanic bought the lifters at discount auto, so thats why i went. now im really confused lol

 

Is the one on the right even a roller lifter?

 

yeah they're both roller lifters. i took the pic at the wrong angle and you can't see the roller. ill post a better picture now...

hmm... i also noticed the different amount of ware and tare on the lifters and i can tell that the one on the left looks newer than the one on the right. would it be safe to assume that the one with the less ware is the newer one? thanks for all the help guys, i really do appriciate it

 

here ya go

 

The one on the left is the factory lifter.

Here's another thread where I posted a pic of mine out of an L31 (Vortec 350).

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...ghlight=roller

 

I wouldn't think its a big deal since they are both rollers. I bet your "mechanic" charged you for a full set though. What all did he supposedly do?

 

lol, he charged me a full set. it pisses me off man, he keeps trying to hustle me and ive just gotten sick of it. i have a new mechanic now who told me i should take some legal actions against my old mechanic. wanna know what else that *** pirate did? look at my NEW roller rockers... not even 1k miles on them before i took them off to inspect them. he told me they had to grind down the tips because the rockers weren't seating right, but i know he's talking crap. he probably noticed they were like that when i had him fix my car again because one of the rockers (second to last one on the top) came loose because the lock wasn't tightened. i honestly think he torqued down the rockers too much and caused the rockers to grind on the retainers (scuff marks on every retainer) and grind themselves at the tip. what do you think happened here? lol

 

Looks like somebody might not have done a very professional job of checking valve train clearances and geometries.

 

Looks like what used to be self aligning rockers.

Good luck in court.

(Although if called to testify, I'd have to admit factory roller lifters rarely need to be replaced given regular maintenance.)

 

Yea, the one of the left is a stock unit. Looks exactly like the one sitting right in front of me on my desk. It really shouldn't matter much, but i would at least make sure they are the same.

 

i had a nice talk to my mechanic today... ***-face kept trying to hustle me because i told him he needed to pay for the lifters that he DIDN'T put in and that he charged me for, and the rockers he ruined. he told me he grinded the rockers to make them fit. i was like "your so full of ****, you're eyes are brown. i cant reuse them, they're no good... show me the money". when my lawyer called him today, he wrote me a nice fat check for $500. 320 for the rockers, $150 for the rockers, and $40 because i had to get my car towed. now to report his *** to consumer protection, and the bbb. damn... it's hard to find a honest mechanic these days, lol

 

It's amazing what those lawyers can do.

 

Nice to see you got some money back... more mod money!

It sucks on the rockers, but it looks like its all cosmetic damage. The washers that make the rockers SA are still there, so they should work fine. I wouldn't worry about them they will take a beating I've put almost 3000 miles on my rockers that were out of a GT1 SCCA road race motor spinning upward of 7,000 rpm continuously. For some reason I got a good deal on them I bought a couple extras just in case, but so far they've all held up.

Now if i can get mine running right

 

well... the washers on most of them are damaged as well. im replacing them because i would feel soooo stupid if i didn't, put them back in, and caused even more damage. it's better to be safe than to be sorry. especially if you're me and every bad thing that could happen, does happen, lol