I had a lot of fun with my LA 408 so far but now I have a noise in the valvetrain. It sounds like a lifter is collapsed I think. The noise is loud on startup (like a loose rocker adjuster) and slowly quiets as she warms up. I have a comp 275hl HFT cam in there. Yes I checked the rockers.

Here's the problem- I need to pull the motor to fix an oil leak down by the pan/timing cover anyway, and between the chance of guessing wrong (I think I know which lifter might be bad) and the chance of the cam going away if I swap all the lifters, I'm thinking about going with a slightly hotter cam while I'm in there.

What would you do:
-replace one or all lifters and keep gettin' it (el cheapo- will I be back in there soon?)
-replace cam and lifters with comp 285hl or equal shelf cam (reasonable$ +fun)
-look into custom grind and fancy hardening/spendy lifters (worth the $ over comp?)
-sell another project and blow the $ on a retrofit mild solid roller (new springs, possible block grinding/full dissasembly, big $ small HP gain)

I have a cast crank and stock edelbrock 60779 heads with a 4 speed. 95% street duty (Tryin to whoop on those $40k Audis bmws and subarus with smug teenagers behind the wheel with my home built junk!) I don't rev past 6500 and I'm shooting for mid 400hp if that matters. Also money figures in pretty heavy but I do believe in getting it right the first time.

Thanks
Radar

I'd check the preload on all of em & if good then push down on each one of them straight down on the p rod end of the rocker arm w a wooden hammer handle while idling & see if I could ID the bad one (the bad one will quiet some w the pressure on it) & replace it & rebreak in the cam procedure

i'd also make sure it wasn't hanging up in the bore. pull the plugs, and roll the engine over. see if you find one hanging up. check them all before starting. if you have a collapsed one, you'll know right away. if it's just one bad lifter, there's nothing wrong with just replacing it, for a new one. if you're going to run a new cam, i'd just go ahead, and replace them all anyways.

Fix the leak and replace that
POS cam and lifters with a real cam/lifters. Call Tim at bullet racing cams or PM me if you need help. Later