HotRodDave I may have misspoken on double roller chain now that I research more. My mind is stuffed with various engines and info. My apology.

Mike I agree failure rate seems to be equal on MDS/non MDS. This particular car I'm working on is a pursuit with 153,000 miles and tons (I forgot the exact right now) of idle and engine hours so I have nothing bad to say about it. I'm just theorizing that maybe the dealership never did the tensioner despite the paperwork. Engine as gotten quieter and I hear the clack far less often since oil change. Doubt it's permanent so still researching and planning lifter/cam and we'll see what else when I'm in there. Looks like Comp Cams part #15820=16 or OEM Hellcat Lifters is the way to go for lifters.

Very interesting video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B2jKRoCvOU

Food for thought
(Oil Pump) >>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkNOXWGXADM

Very nice video for the most part butt look at the cam and lifter at 7:30, that bearing clearly caused the chipping on the cam, if the bearing was perfectly fine it would not have been able to chip away at the edges of the roller path on the cam. As the bearing began to wear out it allows the roller to rock side to side and eat away at the cam not the other way around, a new lifter would ride perfectly smoothly on the center of the worn cam lobe. If as he says it was a cam hardening issue how come it happens mostly on one particular lobe? If it was cam hardening issue all the lobes would show the same evidence of failure, most of the cams I have swapped were almost if not all of the damage is on only one lobe, one with a roller that no longer rolls. I would like to see someone with the proper tools do a hardness test on some cams from the pre-eagle engines and eagle engines cams and see if there is any difference, the lifters are clearly different from 03 to 08 ones.

Also after watching his video I went and looked at a BGE vs Eagle 5.7 pump rotors, the BGE has thicker rotors, looks like maybe .075 from the old eyeball caliper and at least the earlier BGE I have seen some bad cams so it didn't cure the problem. The BGE also has oil squirters squirting more oil at the pistons witch is gonna get flung onto the cam by the crank as it tries to fall down, this extra oil did not solve the problem.

I am still waiting to see in person or even pics of a failed lifter with the big needle bearings... all the bad ones in my scrap bin and all the videos I have watched I could not find one with the big bearings that has failed.

Dave,
In simple terms in your opinion.. Are these mostly "Just Parts Failure" or Would you say and "Oiling Issue Failure" ?

* Most people just want to chalk it up to a design flaw, with not real fix or correction of the problem *
I have been on the fence about this for quit some time, But I'm starting to buy in more and more on the Oiling Issue as the cuprite of a lot of the failures? Not all, just a lot of what we see? Your thoughts please?

P.S. Sorry Larry for the Question to Dave...

That's okay because it's all in an effort to figure out best fix! That video was also interesting but if the that theory of his is that it's not really an oiling issue but high idle times WILL create some issues, but really it's camshaft hardening issues, why did it go on and on about oiling????

Why wasn't his discussion on cams with better hardening qualities?

Isn't excessive idling a problem for many engines? I'd think that the lack of splashing and flinging oil at a 500 rpm idle would be trouble for any engine that relies on splash lubrication.
I have 368,000 miles on my 5.7 and the majority of those miles are at 65-80 mph commuting with the engine between 1800 and 2300 rpms. We are told to run the engine between 2500-3000 rpms to break in flat tappet cams so it seems that is the sweet spot to get oil flinging to the cam and lifters, right?

I don't want people to think I have all the answers, I don't think anyone does butt I just want to throw my opinion out there as I have worked on enough to see trends. I am just reporting what I see.

There are a few things that make me think it can't exactly be just an "oiling issue", I think if it was just an oiling issue it would be consistently one or a few particular lobes, I have seen no consistency of witch lobe is affected, most of the time it is just one single random lobe, I even try to take note of witch lifters no longer roll smooth on a piece of glass and see no particular lobe that is more susceptible. The early 5.7 and 6.1 never had this issue and at least the 5.7 in police service saw many many hours of idle time and I have never seen a bad lobe one one of the 03-08 5.7 or any 6.1 ever. They run the basically same idle oil pressure as eagle engines.

I tend to agree with what the factory seems to think the issue was, it seems they made smaller needle rollers (I suspect probably because they thought it would be more quiet) when they came out with the VVT engines, this needed a thicker roller wheel, that thicker roller wheel blocks more of the splash oil from getting into the roller wheel and lubricating the needle bearings and the fact they are smaller diameter means they just can't last as long.

Since the dealer parts guy pointed out the difference in needle bearing diameter to me I looked in my scrap bin and all the failed lifters had the small bearings as well as all the ones I have done since then, 100% had small needle bearings, others may have seen the bigger ones fail but I can't even find a single picture of a failed large bearing lifter on the internet butt there are plenty of people who claim to have seen them.

I try to buy cars and trucks with the failed lifters all the time (easy repair for me now) and the vast majority that have or supposedly have the issue are all 2009-2011, I see very few 12 or newer. I have not narrowed down the exact year they changed the lifters but 2011 definately had the small bearings and seems to be the worst year hands down and I had a 2014 ram 2500 5.7 I bought with broken springs and a local chevy dealer had already pulled off the heads for the previous owner and told him it needed an engine (it didn't) and it had the large bearings in the lifters. I put on new valve springs, reused the lifters and slapped the heads back on and 30,000 miles later is still running great.

I did have a 2014 6.4 BGE engine I bought with a flat cam one time, I honestly don't know what lifters came out of it, pulled em all out and threw em away before I knew to look for the difference. IF it had the same lifters as a 5.7 and IF it was small bearings that would indicate the change happened in 2014 model year but that is pure speculation on my part. It was basically a short block and I suppose it is even possible someone threw an old junk 5.7 cam and lifters in there, I put all SRT rotating assembly and eagle heads on it and ran it in my 2011 1500 (another I bought with a bad cam).

Like I have said before I do not remember ever seeing a MDS lifter fail, none of the cams still laying around here have a bad MDS lobe. If you think about it, any time it is operating in 4cyl mode there is basically no load on the lifter wheel so it should theoretically anyhow experience longer life. I have seen one bad MDS solenoid, otherwise the system seems flawless to me.

It seems to me if doing an engine now with OEM lifters they must be manufactured after 2016?

I also would like to know if someone is advertising an OEM spec camshaft as a better iron than factory? I don't even know what the factory 5.7 camshaft material is tbh. Is it nodular iron? Does anyone manufacture one of better quality with factory grind?

FINALLY got around to cutting the filter open. Nothing unusual to my surprise. Why that crap was stuck around the drain plug and not in filter is weird to me. I will say the K&N Filter appeared to be very good quality inside and the anti-drain back valve definitely worked as it still had a bunch of oil inside despite having been left to drain for weeks.

p.s. Car has been pretty quiet lately! I'm wondering if something was in a container of oil from production. I guess it could happen. I'm going to do another oil change sooner than needed and see if there's anymore of that plastic like crap stuck to drain plug this time. Sometime in near future I'll put water pump in it as preventative maintenance (been over 80k since and who knows how many idle hours) and probably pull timing cover while in there. That's of course if things keep going well and i don't suddenly go back to CLACK CLACK CLACK....fingers crossed.

The water pump in my 2007 5.7 lasted 367,000 miles!

Wow! I've read people complaining about the water pumps in these but I've never had problems nor early failures at work.

In my 2014 RAM 1500, I had to replace the water pump tube at 55K. Not too bad of a job.