Engine is 512 BB Six Pack, Comp Cams 23-713-9 Hydraulic roller at .549 lift on intake with Scorpion lifters and beehive springs. Open valve at 350 pounds, closed at 150 with Harland Sharp rockers and Edelbrock Performer heads.

Returning from Goodguys event couple weeks ago after very short highway trip, pulled into fuel station and heard familiar clack, clack with engine running roughly.

Assumed another Scorpion collapsed lifter as some 2 years ago had lost one before.

Ordered up a new set of Crower lifters after weighing against possible Morel's who too had overall very good customer reviews.

Pulled intake today and #3 intake lifter was collapsed. Had rocker arm roller to valve stem clearance of .20 gap. Wear pattern on all valve stem tips appear spot on.

Pulled lifter pair and compared the Scorpion's being replaced to the new Crower's to determine if I may need a pushrod replacement.

To my surprise, they appear identical. With a caliper, I measured them everyday from Sunday. All measurements are identical between them.

Scorpion no longer sells lifters but when they did, I recall they were merely repackaging a Johnson product. There are now 2 Johnson firms manufacturing lifters,,,Johnson SEC and I believe a Johnson High Lyfit or some such. Johnson Hi Hylift does not offer a Mopar product, Johnson SEC told me that they make the Crower product. Crower when queried doing my diligence on what lifter to buy was unwilling to admit to whose lifter they sold,,,,except to tell me that they test every lifter for leakdown when they receive them from their supplier and subsequently reject a very substantial number as unacceptable.

The question I have is did I just purchase another set of Scorpion lifters, this time for about 800 dollars(original Scorpions were some 550) or is that perhaps just only the 'body' of the lifter is somewhat a standard used by a number of manufacturers and the higher quality lifters are perhaps internally machined to a higher tolerance level.

The photo below is from right: Crower-Scorpion-Crane. The Crane is from a set given to me by a fellow Forum member, John Cross who is converting to a Porter spec'd cam and valve train. These are older Crane's(when supposedly Crane offered a superior product) had never given John any issues,,,,however he did have other valve train inspired failures that he and a Porter are now dealing with.

So far I have been unable to disassemble my failed Scorpion for a postmortem,,,the prior one I had sent back to Scorpion for warranty replacement. Right now is is soaking in some very strong chemical product to see if I can free it up. Cannot even remove pushrod cup as appears really jammed.

I run Mobil 1, 5w20. Oil is changed often and is clean and tests so with a tester that I use.

Perhaps this thread should be on the engine tech forum,,,but I believe that most of us bounce back and forth.

Just for the record, John and I aren't "dealing" with anything, per se.

He was running a combo someone else had come up with, then a change to that combo was made, which exacerbated what I felt was a problem in the original set-up.

As such....... we discussed some options, and in the end went with a new combo........which I'm hoping he'll be pretty happy with.

Fwiw..........on your combo, I would be using different oil(Driven Hot Rod 10w40 synthetic).......... and I'd get the Morel lifters.

Fwiw 2......I have a set of Crane Hyd roller lifters here that were packaged in 2014 that don't look like those.

Poked a dental pick into pushrod cup hole, managed to get the cup and with a mighty pull the cup came out. However not able to get 'piston' out. Magnetized a screwdriver, stuck it into 'piston' or whatever it is called,. Upon pulling it out, this metallic debris was affixed to the screwdriver, suggesting some catastrophic internal failure had occurred,,,,likely what too had befallen the original failure a couple of years and likely less than 2,000 miles ago. My suspicion is that this failure is not likely an oil failure.

I did have Morel on my short list for lifters, this whole business of lifters and who.makes what for whom was as being in the twilight zone, chasing down rabbbit holes. As I consider myself as somewhat a rookie on this whole complex topic of valve train components, I went with Crower. A main reason being that from what I could tell, but could not confirm is that Morel has 2 levels of products, one of which is retailed by various after market resellers claiming Morel as supplier at around 500 plus dollars and another which is much more costly, but sold by whom I never did determine.



Today is Saturday, Crower not available to speak to, however will be calling them Monday. If I now own another set of Scorpions, this would not be good.

Perhaps you could offer information on Morel's products and from whom I might acquire them and be certain that they truly are Morel's product and not just another reseller claiming that they are.

I did have a chance to examine the refurbishment and upgrade you performed on John's Indy heads. To my limited ability, they appeared first class and I believe he consulted you on the balance of his valve train components, thence my offhand comment that you and he were 'dealing' with the problems that may have been inherent from the beginning when his engine was originally built by a very known Mopar high performance engine builder. Please accept my apology if I had assumed incorrectly.

If I could easily replace what I have with a solid roller I would do so in a heartbeat. Even in a moment of insanity had considered running a solid roller on my hydraulic cam,,,,as some did or tried to with flat tappet cams when I was a kid.

Some have reported that 'older' Crane hydraulic lifters were excellent. 'Older' however was not defined,,,,perhaps before 2014? I can report that my 12 second small block destroked 400 inch 71 Corvette is still happily running the Crane flat tappet hydraulics and camshaft that were installed in the early 80's with nary a hiccup.

I only "know" what I'm told........ And since I don't work at the lifter manufacturers or cam grinders...... I can only go by what they say.

Howard's says they get the hyd rollers from Morel.
That's where I get "Morels" from since I can buy them for a decent price through my supplier.
Are they really "Morels"? I don't know...... But they do look like the same thing that's on the Morel website.

I can't tell what those pieces are in those pics with the shadows.
Something inside was "broken"?

There are very few lifter suppliers/manufacturers for the industry, so a lot of different brands are actually the same parts.
At one point, from what I understand, Crane did make their own hyd roller lifters, although I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the equipment to do that was sold when they were closed, so more than likely what they are selling now is something that's being reboxed.

I can tell you this........ My "if it were me" answer is........ Is try the Morels, and if I had a problem with those....... I'd be making some other changes, besides just lifters.

My Crane lifters look similar, but are a bit darker in color and don't have the shrouded wheel.

Photos as I noted were of broken pieces of thin metal retrieved from inside lifter barrel(so certain is steel) with a magnetized screwdriver once I was able to remove pushrod cup. Appears that before self destructing these pieces were the oil control disc made of spring steel which is standard to most/all hydraulic lifters.

You can understand my being flummoxed in attempting to ascertain who manufactures what and sells to whom under what name in this Wild West industry if you with your vast experience are too bewildered.

As noted earlier, valve spring pressures appear well within recommended guidelines, pushrods are not at any obtuse angles at rocker arm adjusters, wear patterns appear excellent on valve stems. engine is set to max 6,200 rpm via MSD limiter, car is street only and seldom sees even 5,000 rpm. Furthermore after some 3,000 miles only on engine and valve train, 14 lifters have not yet failed, indicating no oiling issues or orther such mechanical pitfalls. There appears a super abundance of oil everywhere it should be and lifters are set at 1/2 turn tight from initial pushrod drag.
Car does perform extremely well when no lifter is in a collapsed state.

I do recall one user on this forum I believe it was, with Scorpion lifters reporting that he collapsed 3 or 4 Scorpion lifters on initial installation and adjustment. Others reported similar experiences with these and other vendors.

This is why I am now concerned that I may have just invested 800 bucks in another set of Scorpions, now labeled as Crower.

Hence the query posted to this forum on the questions I posted.

I will contact Morel directly on their lifters, who sells them and where they are retailed, once I have spoken with Crower, if the answers I get do not increase my comfort level.

I did carefully compare your photos of Crane lifters to those I have. The only place where they definitely appear to differ is at the top where they affix to the link bar. You are correct, they are different. I do not yet know how old the lifters given to me by John. Perhaps they are from a prior generation.


Thank you for your help and advice.

Bewildered?
No....... I've understood for quite a long time now that there are a handful of suppliers for the various components in the cam industry.
A few spring coilers, a few lifter manufacturers, a few cam core sippliers...... The stuff between brands is more the same than it is different.

How sure are you that your springs are set up with the pressures/clearances you say they are?
The reason I ask is, when I've installed the beehive spring that's normally used in that application on the RPM heads, I've had to use a +.050 lock to get the installed height tall enough. From the pics of your heads, yours appear to have the std height locks.
I've also seen where the coil bind height on that spring can vary quite a bit.
If you happened to have the springs installed on the short side, and one or two go into coil bind at a height taller than spec, then you could have a situation where they are starting to stack up, which can really cause some issues with the lifters.

With those springs in particular, I make sure to check the coil bind height on evey one, and adjust the installed height where needed.

Also, the HS "1.5" rockers are usually closer to 1.55, so you could have more net lift at the valve than what's on paper.
This is tough with hyd lifters since they bleed down when you're doing this type of test/measurement, so it really needs to be done with a solid lifter, or in this case, a solid roller.

The biggest difference I saw on the lifters was yours have a completely shrouded wheel, whereas mine have the wheel exposed(although it's tough to make it out in my pic).

Those Scorpion and Crower lifters look identical to the ones I got from Comp Cams. I had the same problem with pushrods popping out (and low oil pressure.)
I replaced them with Morel lifters from Howard's (on the advice of Fast68plymouth) and have had no problems since (and increased oil pressure.)

As far as I am concerned, whoever is making those Scorpion/Crower/Comp lifters is making a substandard product.

Johnson SEC on their website, asserts that Crower among others is a distribution agent for their lifters. As I noted in a previous posting, Crower was unable when asked by me who their supplier was.

http://johnsonlifters.com/Distributors.aspx

Just over 2 years ago i had a severe oil fouling of spark plugs. After much research and debate, including this forum to no success. Consensus was that was a valve guide problem, I disagreed as guides had been replaced and as noted in next paragraph, intake ports on heads and manifold were slathered with a coating of oil. I decided to replace my 906 heads as suspected a sealing issue between Eddy six pack intake and heads were the cause.

Pulling the intake gave no clue that there was a sealing issue except that intake ports coated with oil, but gasket showed zero evidence of leaking, , nevertheless I replaced turkey pan only(unable to replace fiber gaskets as bolt alignment was out of the question), and bolted it up. Outcome was still severe oil fouling.

Purchased Eddy Performer heads from 440 Source for my then solid hydraulic cam. Decided after receiving heads to use roller cam instead requiring valve spring change. Decided upon and ordered up beehives from CC and sent heads off to a very reputable machine shop for inspection and spring change. I had already planned to have the Eddy heads reviewed by the machine shop to double check their quality control.

Recall very well Machinist 'Angelo' calling and telling me that he would need to replace keepers with CC recommended version, and questioning open and closed valve spring pressures that CC recommended for their beehives. I asked him to call CC tech, he called me back and said that all was now ok. He did obtain and install recommended keepers and CC convinced him their specs for beehive spring pressure was correct. As I recall, Angelo was concerned of excessive spring pressure CC recommendation being used on a hydraulic cam.

Have had zero oil fouling issue since head change,,,,assuming that head/intake geometry was compromised somehow,,,likely 906 head milling at one time. Oddly the car used no oil at all, nor did it smoke. Could not be more pleased with current performance except for lifter failures.

I do intend to check out Howard's for Morel's if upon following up with Crower to find if their lifter is the same as was sold by Scorpion,,,incidentally suggested that they produced their own superior lifter when I was evaluating them as a possibility. I had almost purchased CC's when acquiring their cam,,,,but was put off by all the negative comments posted. Now suspect that they are the elephant in the room,,,,it is natural that in sheer numbers they will get more negative reviews than other smaller firms who may percentage wise come off looking better.

Also will have a look at spring gaps at full valve open,,,your point on Harland Sharp ratio well received. Could you offer up any information how I might best check out valve spring pressures and spring gaps.

Thank you

I won't get into a keyboard battle here about your heads, instead I'll just say that I've installed the beehive springs on about 20 sets of those heads, and on all of those sets, +.050 locks were required to get the the correct installed height.
The as delivered installed height for bb mopar rpm heads is a nominal 1.885", and the retainers used for the beehive springs provide less installed height than the Ede retainers when both are used with std height locks. You need + installed height locks to get back to 1.880 with the beehive retainers.
Could there have been some shims under the spring cups that were able to be removed to get back the lost installed height? Sure. But I haven't seen .050 worth of shims under the cups on any of those heads that I've done(about 100 sets).
If the valve seats have been recut, then depending on how that was done, you could gain some usable installed height, then if there were some shims, etc..... You could get there.
While it's certainly possible the installed height is as tall as it's supposed to be........ Based on my experience, I'm skeptical.

My suggestion would be, pull the spring off the valve that just killed the lifter, check the installed height, then check the coil bind height....... And see where you're at.

IMO, the feeler gauge between the coils is a useless way to test for coil bind height...... Especially with beehive springs.
I have seen where the coiling isn't all that concentric, and on those springs it's often the case where the coils will be stacked solid on one side of the spring, and there will be plenty of gap between the coils on the other side........ And the spring is stacked "solid".
And....... Those are usually the ones where the solid height is taller than spec.
I've seen those springs be stacked solid at the "open" pressure height(1.280), which is .050 higher than the coil bind spec(1.230).

I would check what you have, then you'll know for sure.

Everyone can have a bad day, and mistakes are made.

Your friends heads had springs that were supposed to be installed at 1.880.

This is what they actually were........ Which IMO was the root cause of his problems.

I don't know why I remembered the Crane lifters I had here as being "darker".
Actually, they're "shinier".
You can see the exposed wheel better in this pic.

We'll find out if these are the "good ones" or not. They will be getting used with a cam close to .600 lift with open pressures about 400lbs.

The 'Crane' lifters given to me ok nothing as what you show. Additionally do not have any Crane logos.

I was leery of checking spring bind with the normal feeler gauge technique. Glad I asked you the question.

I will dig out the machine shop paperwork on my heads. The Eddy heads were new and included valves, hence no valve job, but as noted, springs were replaced. If memory serves, .050 keepers installed, 150# closed, not positive but 350 open.

The +.050 are gold, and have no lash cap recess, and when they are used the top of the valve barely stands proud of the retainer.
Yours look like std locks...... Comp 611-16.

I should add that even if the installed heights are on the short side, as long as the springs aren't being run into a coil bind condition, it's unlikely this is the cause of the lifter failures.

Speculating....... I can easily see a situation where you're using really thin oil, running for an expended period at highway speeds, which introduces air bubbles into the oil. The aggressive nature of the cam profile and the much higher than oem spring pressures work to marginally collapse the lifter plunger that's only being supported by this layer of now air infused hot thin oil, to the point where there is repeated internal metal to metal contact......... Which in time leads to the break down of an internal component of the lifter to the point of it failing........ And then the plunger sticks when a piece of debris gets lodged in the wrong place.

The only other way I see it happening is if a piece of debris gets into the check valve of the lifter, which doesn't allow it to stay pumped up, then that starts the chain reaction of the plunger being hammered into the lifter body until some pieces fail.

Not that this means anything....... But here is a generic pic out of the 2010 Crane catalog of there hyd roller lifters.

It looks like what you have there as a Crane lifter, and doesn't look like what I have here.

It's been a while since I've had a bb mopr hyd roller lifter from comp cams in my possession.

I didn't realize they had changed to have the shrouded wheels now(I guess they have been like this for a while), but the last time I had a set here, they looked like this:

Here are some beehive springs on rpm heads using the +.050 locks:

Reports from Forum members and others suggest these were a quality product, however could mean what they were compared to then.

John had no problems with those he gave me,,,,but as we and he are now aware, his valve spring pressures apparently were lacking. My guess might be that hydraulic rollers and high(read standard now) valve spring pressures are not yet ready for prime time.

Given that most hydraulic roller failures seem to be due to collapse, and postmortems seem to indicate broken internal discs as I experienced. Solid rollers of course care not a wit about this as they have none of these very flimsy oil control discs to deal with.

On your point on spring bind on specific cylinders/valves. The previous failure that I experienced was on number 6 exhaust. Some 2K miles later it is still ok, which suggests if there was something unique about this cylinder/valve it likely should have failed again by now. The first failure was after just a few hundred miles which suggests a QC manufacturing defect,,,just as with this most recent failure. 14 others have not yet failed.

Would be enlightening if a manufacturer would chime in,,,,but for now it appears that their tactic is to keep their heads down.

The thing I find the oddest about the proportionately high number of people having issues with hyd roller lifters in bb mopars is that......... it seems to happen proportionately less on bb chevy motors.

I rebuild a lot of BBC marine heads, and probably 75%(or more) of those are being run with hyd roller cams, and there are very rarely any lifter failures that we encounter.
Many of these use cams in the .600 lift range, and are using 1.7 rockers, which results in the lifters seeing even higher loads(spring pressure X rocker ratio), and they seem to hold up just fine.