I've got nearly everything ready to startup, but recall that I may have used moly lube on the lifter walls. Have read where they should be clean and/or with a little WD40, so they can rotate freely during breakin. Should I pull the intake (ugh) and correct?

If its worth anything, I finished building a 318 this weekend and for the lifters I just smeared a bit of oil in the lifter bore and dropped them in there. 300 miles so far, so good.

If theres a chance the lifters are gooed up on the sides with Moly, YES, the lifters need to rotate freely from moment one.

i thought Moly Lube WAS for break in???

Break-in lube on the lifter contact face and motor oil in the bores. If you pick the lifters up off the cam lobe they should drop back down by themselves easily.

Run it! Just open a door so you don't get "sleepy" from the exhaust

Can't you pull a valve cover off and stick a flashlight down one of the pushrod holes to see if there is any assembly lube squishing out around the lifter?

The lifter to lifter bore clearance is tight so even if there is assembly lube inbetween the two it's not going to be a huge amount and what little there is will be wiped off after a few cycles. Can you turn the engine over by hand and watch the lifter to see if it turns?

Yea, the valve covers are just laying there. I'll give the flashlight idea a shot. Thx for your suggestions. I REALLY don't want to remove that intake man, redo the valley pan and gaskets...

You can pull distrib and run a priming tool for a while to wash some of that moly out of there, BUT it will also wash the moly off of cam lobes.

Yea, I think I'm pretty much stuck with pulling the intake/valley pan. Lesson learned I guess. I kept good notes on everything I did but for whatever reason didn't write down anything about the lifters...

Good news is I can re-moly the cam while I'm in there since I turned the crank a few turns while attaching the flexplate/TC.