i niticed my lifter was missing the spring that is at the top and keeps it together. i dont know how long it has been this way. i was adjusting the valves after changing heads and noticed.
will this cause the lifter to not work right? i know it must have been this way when i was driving it.
other than finding the missing spring to keep it out of the motor what will this do to the motor?

Did the cup [Edited by Moparts - Family Friendly Site - Keep it clean] sideways ? If so the lifter will stop spinning and it will flatten the lobe , been there . Pull the lifter and look at the bottom of it .

the lifter still looked normal . i actually forgot about it because its been sitting for 2 years since i originally pulled the head off. i finally got around to putting the heads back on and firing it up. but forgot about the lifter until now after i got it together.
i have adjustable rockers on the heads that i put on and i was trying to adjust them before i ran it. a couple of the lifters seemed like they just kept on pushing up and didnt stop , i kept adjusting back the rocker until it was out of adjustment and then thought about the one lifter not having the spring in it, and maybe there were others that lost the spring, would that make the lifter seem to keep pushing up because it didnt hit the spring retainer and stop?
i adjusted them by turning the motor every 90 degrees and checking 2 like the chart i have said to .

The clip is there to keep the lifter together during shipping/installation.During normal operation the cup never contacts the snap ring,so it's just hanging around doing nothing. I would replace the wire type retainer with a C clip type in any hyd combo that will be run with lash,whether intentional or not.

so the lifter dosent actually pump up aginst the retainer? i was worried that it would pump up and past it and keep on pushing the valve open too far. i really never knew how the lifter worked as far as pumping up and knowing how far to pump up.
so the clip is only for shipping and assembly and not to keep the lifter from pumping up too far?

If the hyd lifter is used with preload on the base circle and your not lofting the lifter over the nose it will not have any effect. Of course setting preload is done with the clip in place as a starting point,then preload is added to keep the cup down from the weak wire retainer and allow quiet operation. Valve spring pressure won't(SHOULD NOT) allow the cup to escape the lifter body.

I could see that happening with the sheet metal type cups used in some lifters,if the valve train is having issues bad enough to kick the retainer out. Most of the hyd lifters I work with have cups near .200" tall and .001" clearance to the lifter body,they don't have any chance of laying over.

Put my recently rebuilt motor in and after 3 hours run time thought I had a catastrophic failure. Took the valve cover off and found 1 rocker arm with about 1/2 inch play. Took the motor back out and took it back to the builder for an autopsy. We found the cup inside the lifter had broken and jamed down in the lifted. No other damage as we can tell. This is a Comp cams lifter so whats up with the metallurgy?