Anyone have a BB Isky Red Zone lifter not in the motor?

I'm looking for some pics of BB Isky Red Zone lifters with the EZ roll option..... Specifically the oil feed holes for the bushings.

Mine are in the motor. However with a standard base circle cam the small oil feed holes are about .040" below the bottom of the lifter bore in my mega block.
Doug

Doug do your intake lifters use an offset pushrod cup?

Yes offset on the intakes. Found this drawing I made and a pic of one out of the motor.
Doug

Thanks for the pics.

For some reason I thought they had pressure fed oiling to the axles, but apparently it's just splash oiling.

The ISKY lifters DO HAVE an oiling hole very similar in placement, on the lower band edge, as the Comp lifters. I can text you a pic if you wish.

I have a customer who I recently got some Red Zones for.

Apparently hey have changed the body design. They no longer have an oil band, but rather two relief cuts, one on the front, one on the rear...... Which do not intersect the oil gallery...... And he says there are no oil holes in the relief cuts(and even if there were, since the reliefs aren't connected to the gallery, I don't know how much good they would do).
The only oil holes are located directly above the axles.

Sean, if you could post or send a pic of some with the pressure feed holes, that would be great.

The ones my customer has look like this:

Those are the same as mine.

Picture courtesy of HardcoreB:

Okay great..... Thanks.

Do those only have that feed hole from the band, or is there also a hole above the axle?

Now I am seeing THREE different versions of the same lifter from ISKY. Mine have the same body but have a different oiling hole location as the ones Doug is using. There is no way a bushing will survive without a pressure/suspension feed. I remember having some confusion in talking with Doug about his lifter oiling 'problem' now the pic shows me why. But fwiw he is having success with his system now...he likely just had a bad lifter. Dewayne I text you a pic..did you get it?

ONLY in the band, NOT perpendicular above the wheel.

It's really early in the discovery process at this point, but my customer has had an issue with his cam/lifter situation.
It may end up being like the "chicken and the egg"..... As to which was the cause of the problem.......but I was pretty surprised to learn his lifters didn't have any way to pressure feed the bushings.

But they DO...the hole above the axle is hydraulically feed via the wall clearance between the body and the bore. If it makes the builder feel any more confident you could groove a channel on the bore connecting the two feed holes.

Doug is having luck using the lifter in the same way, with no groove AND the orifice actually drops below the feeding bore while on base circle. I would feel better with a small groove personally. and if you had to bush the block a longer bushing fully enclosing the lifter feed area would help too maintain constant feed pressure. IMO!!! lol

On my customers motor, the oil hole above the axle is only in the bore for about the last .125 of lift.
It's pretty far removed from the "source" of the oil, and rotated 90deg from it.

The hole is exposed to the crankcase most of the time.

This really doesn't seem to be a very effective way of oiling the bushing....... And maybe they don't need much oil.
But we have a problem with this motor, and it's going to require a little more investigation to see if we can get to the cause of the problem.

I feel strongly that is the problem...you wont see an engine clamshell bearing live under these compromised feed conditions and they are subject to much less 'localized' loading.

That's my position as well, but the Isky literature has claims about how "oil restrictor" friendly the bushings are, and the super hard material, etc....... So I'm leaving the door open for another explanation.

I feel the bushings in this motor failed because of a lack of adequate lubrication.
That's what I'm going with unless I hear a good argument to the contrary.

The cam will go back to Comp, the lifters back to Isky...... See what that they come up with.

This is far from any type of "extreme" application either....... .430 lobe lift, 1.5 rockers, 600lbs open pressure.

Well........these didn't last long at all.
All 16 are toast in about 200 street miles...... With no WOT blasts yet.


Obviously, the bodies like the ones we're dealing with aren't a retrofitted BBC body, as the lack of oil band i think would block/severely restrict the oil flow in a BBC block.

I don't know why they dont all get the oiling like the ones in the pic of your actual BBC set.
That really seems like the best solution to me.

A final decision won't be made until after we hear what Isky has to say, but at this point I'd say it's very unlikely bushed lifters with this oiling set-up will end up back in the motor.

I am leaning toward this Crower.. It shows to have high pressure oiling from the band down.

Interestingly, Crower insists on the HIPPO oiling for their bushed lifters:

I just got this two weeks ago. Maybe marketing and engineering aren't in sync?

Or break the bank and put Jesel rollers in. Very nice roller but have a crazy price tag attached.

Mine now have 185 passes. Lash stays on within .000 during most lash checks. 2-3 lifters may change .001" at each check. Heck that could be my feel. 300# seat, 800# open Comp .471 lobe, 1.7 T&D.
Doug

Like I said, we’ll be looking to hear what Isky has to say, but the fact is at this point that after 200 miles we have 16 lifters where the bushings are worn out.

The whole motor has been torn down to make sure any metal that may have been pumped through motor didn’t do any unseen damage.

Everything else was good.

The only issues were that the bushings and wheels on the lifters are shot, and the cam is scored up.........like what you’d expect to see if the wheels on the lifters were skidding instead of rolling.

Hopefully between Comp looking the cam over, and Isky looking the lifters over we can get a more definitive answer as to why this happened.

Paging Al Alguire...Do you happen to have any pics of the red zones you are using successfully in the b1 motor??? I'm curious to see which of the 3 or 4 different styles of body you are using with good results.

If he's running with pushrod oiling, it would have to be the "Chevy" style body.

The 3472-RH EZX's my customer has have no provision to oil the pushrod.

IMO, the bottom line is....... Is splash oiling going to sufficiently lube the bushings or not...... Because that's how the ones my customer has get oil in his OE 440 block.

I have been looking and looking for pics of my lifters out of the engine to no avail. These would be 3772-LO-180 w/ EZ-X Roller Option. There is a label indicating they were assembled in June of 2015. They were for sure the solid body and had a hole feeding the axis of the roller bearing. That I remember.

Also, my cam is a 1.050 base circle. Doug, do you happen to have the base circle of your cam handy? Could that have something to do with it as well?

FWIW I have had no oil pressure but that was only 20ish dyno pulls.

Those are raised pushrod seat, pushrod oiling, .180 offset.

Yep they are in the low deck with the MW Victors and Hughes 1.7's. I ordered pr oiling because in case we went to paired shaft at some point down the road.

I don't remember the base circle but the cam lobes are Comp RX1718 Intake XCX1866 Exhaust.
Doug

All else being equal, more lobe lift = smaller base circle.

3372-RHEZX with thousands of miles on them. Just sent em back and they said they were ok and didn't need to be rebuilt. 400 seat and 950 open.

They are made for pushrod oiling though..

I've sold a few sets of these over the years, never an issue before.
I felt these were really the go-to lifter for this application, street/strip 505 with about .650 lift, which is why I recommended them in the first place.

Efidart, do you know if yours have the oil feeds to the bushings like the ones in the pics from HardcoreB?

I've had this same issue with just about every mfg of lifters. What they say the lifters are like and what they actually ship are sometimes two different things. The catalog will say pushrod oiling and bushing oiling but when you get them you can see that they don't work that way.

I've had this issue with Crower and Comp. These days I don't believe anything the mfg tells me. I just order one pair of lifters and check them over and then order the rest of the set.

My guess is that most of the mfgs don't understand how a Mopar oiling system works so they just ship stuff that works in a Ford or a Chevy and call it good. Crane seems to be the exception. I've talked to the folks at Crane a few times and they actually seem to understand how to make a Mopar lifter. Not so sure about anyone else. Maybe Morel knows how to do it??

I have a set that are my spares now...would you like me to take some pics?

I don't think you can oil a bushing from splash. We all know a needle bearing needs much less oil than a bushing does.

Personally, I wanted bushing type rollers as far back as 1984 when I lost my first roller lifter. All the engineers I knew said you needed pressure fed oiling to do it. Then years later they came out with bushing lifters.

This is exactly what happened to me with brothers Iskenderian. Told them I wanted pressurized axle oiling, and sold me the 3472 RH w/o pressurized oiling. Called them back and he said that he would add the pressurized oiling, for a price.

They have so many lifter body options, I don't think they actually know themselves.

Went with them as delivered. Several thousand miles, no issue. Mine has the needles, and I have mild lobes and lollipop springs. 15 psi at idle in gear. FWIW

I think the "Red Zone" lifter came out around 2004.They were advertised as having pressurized oil to the needles.So I ordered a cam,lifters and springs for my HEMI after having a failure of the Comp 829 lifters.They sent the cam and springs and told me the lifters were to follow.We installed and degreed the cam and installed the springs.When the lifters came,there was an oil band in the body of the lifter,,,,but no orifice to allow pressurized oil into the lifter.I called Isky and got one of the 5 techs that I spoke with during the ordering process.I had repeatedly told them I was buying the Red Zones for that feature.That's when I was told the BBM lifters did NOT have that feature.
Well I made a stink and ended up with "Rich" that supposedly owned Isky.He offered to rebuild my NEW lifters and drill the body so I would have the option the lifters were supposed to have and would only charge me $125!! I informed him that they were advertised to have that option and should NOT be charged.He came back with,,,,we make those lifters for Jim Oddy and Jim said they weren't needed.I told him I'm not Jim with 5 engines as spares.He then told me to sent his s%$t back.If I had not installed the springs & cam I would have sent everything back.
Out of curiosity I dropped the lifters in and the link bar attaching the pairs hit the lifter boss on my mega block.
I sent the lifters back and bought Comp 848s that were an AMC application.They are on their 3rd rebuild.Because of the treatment from Isky I will NEVER buy their product again!
Because of their PR oiling capability I sent oil up the exhaust PR for a little extra oil on the exhaust springs.I also installed a set on my friends wedge,we both lost 15 lbs of OP.So I installed restrickers in the PRs and the 15 lbs came back.I have no clue how they make then now,but id does not matter.NO isky products for me.Comp has been good to me.

Sean, I am in DC so no pictures available. I have two sets of Iskys and one set of Crower bushed lifters and also use Jesel stuff in the Predator. Pretty sure all my iskys I have used look like the ones you have posted. Definitely never seen one like Dwayne has posted and 100% sure on that. And the Crowers look similar to the iskys you posted. They are ALL pushrod oil, I also have them in my 68 Camaro street car and they have been in there for years with no issues. Wish I could participate more but without seeing them in hand cant tell you..

No problem Al, I trust your memory. Thanks for the reply.

Yes please, if you could also comment on your success and application that may help the thread.

Russ, when you said yours had the same body design as this set I'm working with I wondered if they had bushings or bearings.
Obviously the splash oiling is sufficient with the bearings....... That's what everything had for years........and I'm pretty sure if we would have gone with bearings in this set there wouldn't have been any issues.

The lifters are enroute to Isky, cam to Comp...... We'll see what the verdict is.

Not Russ here but, in the sets I have here, I do have BOTH styles of bodies with BOTH bushing and roller...it maybe be one possibity... by design the one style that is 'supposed' to be for bearing BUT gets 'upgraded' to a bushing during rebuild etc...some time after it initially leaves Isky initially.

There was no rebuilding of the set we have that failed.
They were bought new a couple months ago as 3472-RH EZX.


My personal "opinion" at this point is, the configuration for oiling on the lifters we have is not sufficient for the bushings.

Now, if there were several people who were running these same style lifters we have, also bushed, that also have the feed holes not being pressure fed most of the time........ And not having any issues with them, that would be a step towards me changing my opinion.

I'm really not looking to point any fingers at either Isky or Comp. I'm just trying find the cause of the problem so we can avoid it happening again.

So I am using this lifter in a Indy block, with pushrod oiling...

Judging by the witness marks on the lifter body, it appears that the lifter is way up in the bore at full lift.
Any feed holes in the oil band going to the axles?

Did you happen to notice if the oil feed hole above the axle is exposed when the lifter is on the base circle?

Since those lifters have an actual oil band, the pressurized oil supply is quite a bit closer to that axle feed hole.

Looks like that part number puts the pushrod oiling holes where they should be for a Mopar...... Parallel to the axle.

I'll get back to you this evening with more pics and do my best to answer your questions...

Sure. I have been watching this post from the beginning and did not post initially because mine have the bearings. When no one seemed to describe the lifter body that you put up, I thought I'd mention having the same body.

Must had a bad day as Andy's post spurred me to tell my whiny Isky story. Thought I'd finish with at least some info, albeit not on point.

I personally think it is reasonable to believe you have a lifter design issue there, and was not suggesting otherwise.

Bumping for GregsDart and anyone else. Greg, the oiling orifice is likely an oddball size so to find brass that will press-in may require some machining. I remember seeing a set of lifters that BoatRacer572?, with the Predator builds out in California, posted that had brass in them to restrict. Maybe he will offer what he did? But as Doug pointed out his system has the same orifice area using thinner oil and has very good pressure (not that it is correct, but it's working) As THAT thread was concluding maybe you have a smaller base circle and that has caused direct unrestricted presssureized orifice exposure.

Here is an update on what happened with the lifters from the start of this thread.

We never really got an answer as to why the bushings failed so quickly.
But, they did replace them with a different version that does have an oil band and edm feed hole from the band to the axles.
They also have the upgraded “speedway” bushings.

I had the customer prime the motor with the valley cover open, and he verified oil would ooze out around the wheels with the system under pressure.

No problems with these so far.

I sent back the cam and had it checked for hardness, it was fine, so I had them regrind it.

Mine are still running fine, 250 passes. Very little if any lash change on inspections. I don't know if I mentioned it but I had 1 fail at 80 passes. Sent them all back. Got them back a week later, no charge. Don't know what they did but I haven't had an issue since. Maybe they changed all the bushings? Don't know. The failed one was caught quickly on a lash check. gained .007" in 20 passes.
Doug