after dropping in the new V10 lifters I discovered the alleged cause of my 'chattery' engine - WAY too much lifter preload. I used digital calipers to measure how far the lifter plunger recesses into the lifter as the valvetrain is tightened up - from 'no slack' to 'tight' there appears to be about...wait for it... 167 thou (.167) of preload...which is about .137 too much (that's just over 1/8"). This alone is likely the reason the lifters have been so noisy, and only through the simple task of replacing the lifters did I discover it. I have an adjustable pushrod coming along with a set of 8" calipers, and I'll soon know exactly what length of pushrods I need - my prediction is 6.800 (6.941 is what was in it). The spec for these lifters is .030, so yah it was way off.

I 'restored' the engine - disassembled down to the rear main seal, and reassembled with fresh gaskets n seals, etc. In the process, the heads were inspected and surfaced - but I do not know by how much (maybe a lot more than I'd originally thought). Fel-Pro #519 HD head gaskets were used, but I've no idea how much thicker or thinner they are compared to OE.

A new cam (Comp Cams) was installed, which presumably had a lower base circle. The rockers and all are stock. Because of the cam swap, and because of the noisy chatter, on a professional recommendation I opted for .036-longer pushrods, which ultimately were even that much more too long.

It is possible the stock pushrods were already too long to begin with - even before I opened up the engine. Shaving the heads naturally brought them closer to the cam...but not normally by enough to make the pushrods too short - it's possible mine were milled more than usual - l'll never know. The fact is the pushrods appeared to be a lot longer than they're supposed to be.

Meanwhile the axles back from the blaster and ready for the trusses. The Artec truss kits are very impressive jigsaw puzzles - the attention to detail and fitment are the best I've ever seen 👍









And I'm using 'Steel-It' to pre-paint underneath the hardware in advance of welding it all up - it's a weldable HD stainless steel-infused polyurethane paint - neat stuff, and reeeeeally bad for you -