+1 on the "growing old is just a state of mind" part! LOL

B

 

The crowd I hang with use 10k miles as the deciding factor, when changing cams. Anywhere near that mileage and the lifters get changed with the cams. Not so much the mating surface, as the risk of failure. GM lifters or not, these are not GM motors.

Low cost, low labor if done with the cams. Cheap insurance!

I hear of these "same lifters as GM" failing often enough in the HD application of them. Do you not ever hear of a lifter failure on a Harley????

Apples and Oranges.



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I can't say I've known anyone who's had a lifter problem, at least not since the "big axle" lifters were introduced in the mid-'90's. Bearing failures were fairly common with the "small-axle" type, but they haven't made those in 15 years or so. I also haven't heard of many problems reported on the forums, but I'm sure like any other mechanical component some do fail. What might apply is the "if it ain't broke..." principle, as if they are working properly you may replace one or more with a defective lifter that won't, although I'll admit that's a long-shot.

I replaced the original big-axle lifters in my '96 RK at 65k as a precaution, left the second set in the bike up to 106k when I sold the bike (41k miles later), and they are still there at 120k even though the idiot new owner ran it low on oil for a short period. "It really rattled...." Yeah, I guess it did.

I won't fault anyone for changing theirs during a cam change, but I feel it isn't warranted in most cases, although I'm not sure what mileage would be the cut-off point for me to feel a lifter change was necessary.

 

I wasn't worried about failure of the lifters. Most of the builders I spoke to and my HD wrench suggested that new lifters would mitigate issues with different wear patterns. I'm not a wrench, but as I understand it, the lifters and cams ride on each other and can create wear patterns. Replacing one or the other without the wear patterns can create gaps. Don't know what gaps cause, but I figured that since I had everything opened up, I'd take out the insurance plan. BTW, I'm the one that asked my HD wrench about it... he hadn't brought it up.

 

First, I don't want to come across as denigrating those who decide to change lifters with cams, as I don't think it is the wrong decision. I also don't think it is necessarily the wrong decision to elect not to replace them, which is the route I chose.

I don't think "wear patterns" are an issue for roller tappets like they would be for flat-tappets. I've been told that wear is minimal for the roller tappets and cams, and when I replaced mine on my old RK at 65k I saw no wear on the cams or lifter rollers at all. I changed them only because I didn't know if the bike had the old "small-axle" lifters installed, which were known to fail, but even though it had the newer big-axle type I changed them anyway. I installed new lifters on the Andrews EV13 cams that had been in the bike for >50k miles and the bike is still running fine today on that second set of lifters at 120k miles. Had wear patterns been an issue I think it would've shown up by now on that bike.