Got this thing back together a week ago. It is a beast! Going to need headers and a tune soon. Something else I noticed is that a one of the lobe on the cam had a "chip" on the top of it where it was wearing. The lifter had some shining spots on it but nothing that had started scoring and it still rolled smoothly. Obviously if I had not have the cylinder head issue with would have gone out at some point....

Does anyone have a real answer why hemis eat lifters/cams? I do realize the needle bearings go but is it a material or production defect? I have done some searching and have come up with earlier production of the mds lifters doing this but there is no definitive answer as far as specific part numbers go (at least I didn't find anything). From what I can tell all of the new mds hemis use the same lifter and they have superseded a fair amount of previous lifter models.