Part Wanted

I, too, have been waiting to try to figure out a soulution to this problem. I have an eight cylinder engine that I'm rebuilding that had 96,000 mostly dirt road miles on it and boy are those lifters worn.

Just make sure you use all of one radius and not mix them. The duration of the cam is altered and a cylinder compression imbalance will occure if some intakes and /or some exhausts are different from each other. . The larger the radius, the longer the dwell between opening and closing. Looks to me like the later cam followers would be a cheap perfromance change on the older splashers. What cam profile changes went along with the follower changes? What say you Geoff? I bet you have been down that road.

As far as I can ascertain, the cam profiles remained the same, only the radius of the lifters was changed. Obviously, as has been stated, the differing radius changes the overlap, and opening and closing degrees slightly. If you have worn lifters they can be built up by arc welding, using a hard facing electrode, and then re-ground. I came across an engine once that was extremely noisy in the valve train. Tappets were correct clearance. When I stripped it down, the lifters had been ground flat across the bottom. these had to be built up, as there was not enough metal left to re-grind, without the possibility of the lifter coming out of the guide and turning, which of course would haveen catastrophic.

I had another engine once that was very noisy on one valve, and the sides were broken off the lifter giude allowing the lifter to rotate, which damaged the cam as well. This can happen if you don't use a spanner on the lifter itself when undoing the lock nut. Just somethign to watch out for.

Geoff.

tigermoth wrote:

as long as this thread is lifters...when did hudson use roller lifters? i have a set that came with engine parts i purchasd from a guy who was rodding his car. regards, tom

Rollers were introduced in both Hudson and Essex in 1922. Prior to that they were flat bottom lifters that rotated in the guide. The rollers used up to '33 in the Hudson 8 , and '32 in the Essex 6. Solid lifters were introduced with the '32 Terraplane. Strangely, Hudson made a point of featuring their "Roller lifters" in advertising in 1937, even though they were more correctly "Wiper lifters" by then. T hen the circle went right around in 1948, with the introduction of the new 262 motor, with pressure oiling, and solid rotating lifters. Of note, is that it was 8 cubic inches bigger than the 8 cylinder, yet 7 b.h.p. less!

Geoff.

OlHudson8r wrote:

Geoff, I am sure my Terraplane 8 that I owned in the late 1950's, had roller tappets. It was an original car with only 12,xxx miles at that time. I set the tappets on it a couple of times. That engine was the quietest of any Hudson engine that I have ever had. Dee K.

Yes, you are right, and I stand corrected! Looking up the parts catalog, the same lifters and guides were used in all '30 -'33 models, and the solid lifters came in with the '34 models. So the lifters are interchangeable for all Essex and Terraplane 1925 thru 1933, including Hudson 8's. Then 1934 had lifter # 45443, '35 - '42 used #152646, and '46-47 '6's and '46-'52 8's used 166233. The only difference in the lifters is the radius of the bottom surface. You can re-profile the camshaft and use the later lifters in all '29-33 models, which gives a good improvement in performance and economy, but you can't use the lifters without modifying the cam, as they tend to be quite noisy due to the angle of lift. (I tried it in my Essex). You also cannot grind the cams in '28 and earlier models and use the later lifters, as the profile and lift are quite different, and you have to grind too much off the heel of the cam, and this lowers the lifter too far. One time I replaced the lifters in a '35 Terraplane (which had had the lifters ground flat), with some roller type out of an Essex motor, and it did indeed run extremely quiet, but it reduced the radius from 4" to 1", and it did not have as much "oomph" as before, so we eventually found the correct ones for it. This all once again emphasizes Murphy's Law, No. 17 - "Interchangeable parts exhibit fundamental differences".

Geoff.

Geoff.