1968 289 H2O

Flat Tapped Hydraulic Lifters

The exercise in futility continued. I pulled out the lifters part number VL-67RH one by one and of course one is rusted, the others seem ok, or are they? First of all I finally learned there are four types of lifters. You tell them apart by what types of tops or bottoms they have. For our inconvenience the names the industry uses could not be more difficult to follow.

Here are the terms as they make sense to me. First of all tapped means lifter and lifter means tapped.

When it comes to the bottoms there are two kinds, flat or roller, period. Flat means metal cylinder chunk the size of your thumb. Roller means there is a wheel or a roller on the bottom of the lifter. I think up until 1985 the Ford 289/302 small block used a flat tapped camshaft and then it switched to the roller camshaft in 1986.

When it comes to the top they can be solid or hydraulic, but that would be too easy so some places call solid [wait for it] mechanical! Say what? That's right mechanical to me means it does something it moves or it spins, or it clicks, etc, but in this case it means metal cylinder chunk basically a metal stick the size of your thumb, it does nothing. Hydraulic should be called self adjusting, (do you hear me automobile engineers) if your label needs a label it is NOT a good label!

So if you say to me that is a hydraulic lifter I will ask you what the hell do you mean hydraulic, but if you say that's a self adjusting lifter I will say, yup sure is, pass the beer.

Which brings us to the 64 million dollar question(s) (hold pinky to corner of mouth Dr. Evil style) How can you test a hydraulic lifter? Or can you test a hydraulic lifter? Or how do you know when a hydraulic lifter is bad?

See in my case I have two things going on with my lifters. Some of them I can set on my workbench, take an old push rod and press down on them and they give about 1/8th of an inch, others do not? So are the ones that move up and down a little bit the good ones, or are the ones that don't go up and down the good ones? Phrased differently should hydraulic lifters move at all?

There are only 16 lifters in my 289 V8 however I am showing 24 below to show you how I numbered them with a sharpy on their buttoms.

The Oil Pan

Having plenty of better things to do, instead I decided to clean the oil pan. But dish soap and scotch bright was no match for the crusty ol' pan so the wire brush and the electric drill had to come out.

The last picture shows half the gasket area all cleaned up and ready to go.

Alternator Off

So I pretty much decided I am going to replace this tired ol' rusty 289 with my tired ol' non rusty 302 (circa 1976, aka the SMOG era and the reason why I wanted to save the 289) that I have sitting in the garage.

In order to remove the engine out of the car I began by removing the accessories and other doodads, some you probably should remove (alternator), other's I just removed for fun (fuel pump).

When I saw all the wires going to the back of the alternator I actually decided to just unbolt it from the engine block, undo the ground wire(s) and tuck it away in the battery tray area and leave all the wiring on it in tact, I will deal with that later.

Fuel Pump

The fuel pump was next.

Why show you all this? Well because you get to see what the internals of a 40 year old engine look like. Sometimes you can't judge a book by it's cover. Take this fuel pump for example. From the outside it looks like dog sheet, but it actually works fine, it was spitting out old gasoline when I was turning the crank over by hand.

Anyway you don't have to remove the fuel pump in order to pull the engine out, but I was being curious and wanted to see what it looked like. Also this being a one man job, anything to lighten the load right?

Note what I did with the old fuel pump bolts. I said this before and I'll say it again, sometimes the best place for your old bolts is right back where they came from.

My Assistant aka the One Bolt Specialist, OBS

My mom came by to see how I was doing and asked if she could help. Sure I responded, calling her bluff. Well low and behold she was serious. So I put her to work.

It was strange to have someone around who actually knows less than you. Being the two bolt mechanic myself, (see earlier post) I had no problem assigning mom, her first task.

I asked her to remove the distributor, making her officially the One Bolt Specialist, OBS - hey you gotta start somewhere! LOL

I did say I am enjoying this whole car thing, so I make it fun. What would you rather do hang out with your folks at the Bingo Parlor or bust knuckles together? We're killing two birds with one stone here, spending time with our parents and fixing [ahem] dismantling a vehicle.