Plan to re use my roller lifters with less than 30,000 miles on my 357 w/vortec heads. I’ve had them soaked for a couple of months and installed on the new engine to get the correct push rod length. My question is are lifters supposed to be easy to plunge or should there be a lot of resistance.

 

If the lifter have been soaked in oil, and are filled with oil, they will require a lot of pressure to move the inner plunger. You would have to sustain about 80# of pressure over a period of time to force the oil out of the metering valve and compress the plunger. It might be just as fast or easy to remove the retaining clips, disassemble the lifters, and clean all the parts. Lightly oil them for reassembly, then test them.

 

Thanks for the response. I went ahead and acquire 8 roller lifters at t he local junkyard.

 

What are you going to use for the other half of the engine?

 

With gas prices so high , I was going to try something different and make the engine only actually run on 4 cylinders vice 8. Actually these are just spares. $10.00 is not bad for used lifters.