I'm beginning to think the same thing.

 

Thanks Unreg..

I don't mind to tell you I would have been mad as all hades, and likely released the Cracken on some buddies had those lifters not filled..

I have to ask- how do you test them? I guess I got lucky.. Hell, I got lucky in how I figured which one was bad.. I wouldn't know where to begin to test them short of putting everything back together and firing the engine up..

 

I knew that was going to most likely be the case. I'm going to provide some information on this matter in order to provide you, the end user, with some knowledge on motor oil types vs. application.

I used to run AMSoil, which, is the best full synthetic oil on the market today. It really is an outstanding product and offers far more protection (based on lab results) than any other motor oil bar none. However, for an engine that is equipped with hydraulic style lifters- it was a bad choice per application.

I've also witnessed a brand new Vette with lifter clacking and, suffered from lifter collapse during hi rmp use. Same as what happened to me. Only he was running M1. He came into the shop and said he thought he blew a lifter and, we asked him what kind of oil he was running. He informed us it was OEM. Well, M1 is OEM.

The oil was immediately drained and refilled with Valvoline Dino Oil. The problem of noisy lifters was gone and, not only did it quiet down those noisy lifters, it ran better too. Smoothed out the idle as well.

I went through the same thing as he - my Dodge was running rough, it was clacking and, it would pop under when jamming on it at high rpm range.

One day, I went up to a friend of mine who's got an account with Edlebrock to order some heads, rods etc. Anyway, I went to pick the heads up and, when loading them into the rear of the truck, he noted the cases of AMS oil. He immediately got excited and told me to remove that s-h-i-t ASAP. I looked at him thinking WTF. But, before arguing, I just listened because he was very excited and, he clearly knew something that I didn't and, he was not only going to tell me what he learned, he was going to prove it to me as well by showing me some examples of motors that were in his shop torn down and needed a rebuild on them due to running full synthetics in big blocks using parts that were designed around dino oil.

He ran me through his shop and showed me engines that had major debris inside all over the internals of the engine and explained to me that was caused from synthetic motor oils. The synthetics rarely contain detergents because, they interfere with the lubrication properties and induce breakdown of of the material at the molecular level. Now, I called AMS and had spoken to their chemist and tech support to find out if this was true or not. YES- it was true. AMS does not have any detergents or any additives for cleaning the motor nor does a lot of others. In fact, on some oil makers tech support sites such as Valvoline for example, they WARN against using synthetics in engines that were running hydraulic lifters on engines designed around dino oil.

Inside all the engines running full synths regardless of brand, each engine had a hard, baked on crusty matter that covered almost everything other than piston walls, crank journals (basically everything other than interference junctions). This matter is extremely prone to flake-off thus ending up inside the oil passages thus BLOCKING them or, CLOGGING the lifters thus, inducing failure at the lifter level.

When the oil gets up to temp and, during hard use, synths have a well known issue and, that is called thinning. The oil thins out, and, a loss of hydraulic pressure is the end result thus, collapsing the lifter. This is a second mode of failure- thinning when used in hydraulic lifters.

This baked on matter was brought into this forum by myself after I removed the entire top end of the motor and ran a full inspection on every part. I noted the same results that I'd seen at California Horsepower.

After I mentioned this, other forum users began to post their engine pics and sure enough, there were more of the same. I termed the phrase: cajun BBQ crust. All running various brands of synths showed similar results- dirty engine loaded with debris.

I found that it (synths) do NOT do as good a job at cleaning the motor as a TOP QUALITY brand (Castrole or Valvoline) motor oil that is 100% petroleum based and top quality additives. Not to be confused with cheaper oils containing wax / paraffin-based like Penzoil crap but, good engineered oils.

The engines that were running dino oils showed NO crusty matter and, the metal surfaces looked just as great as they did when the went together. Shiny, clean etc. Nothing more to report here.

There's a huge difference here and, if I hadn't seen it myself, I'd still be running AMS and dealing with clacking and rough idle not knowing what the hell was wrong.

Now, if the oil is changed at OEM specified intervals, there's no issues with sludge. Sludge is associated with dino oils as everyone is aware around here but, that's not a concern if the oil is changed out regularly and new material is put in. It's a non-issue.

IN my case, after noting the problem on my own engine and, it running like crap on synthetic before rebuild and after the rebuild, I changed to Valvoline and now - to Castrol dino oil and, I've had no issues since. I'm even running the OEM lifters with 160K plus miles on them without issue. It's still nice and quiet.

For certain, there are engines that benefit from running full synthetic motor oils, but, Dodge Magnum engines are not in that application list nor are Chevy Silverado engines either. Here's another one that happened last summer.

I ran into a guy in the parts store who was looking for top quality synths and, I told him I had AMSoil. I warned him of the issues but, he persisted on buying a case from me and, well, I did.

He showed up at my shop weeks later asking me to refund him his money on the ones he didn't use. I asked what the issue was (knowing full well what the issue was) and he told me that he went out towing up in the high desert and he lost oil pressure and his engine began running rough and clacking like a SOB.

It was summer, he was loading it down, thermal loading on the engine caused the motor oil to run hot and, it thinned thus, loss of hydraulic pressure in the system thus, lifters started to collapse and, it ran rough.

Root cause for failure: Full synthetic motor oil used in the wrong application.

I told him I had warned him and, that he was more than likely going to have an issue to which he did experience exactly what I told him would happen.

He changed the oil back to Dino oil (valvoline) and told me the issue went away. Problem solved by an oil change to the OEM specified type for the application.

I hope that helps a bit. I know it was long winded but, again, I hope that you get something out of this and learn what I learned. If it wasn't for someone telling me what the hell was going on, I'd still be trying to figure it out and most likely chalk it up to a mechanical or electrical issue. It really helped me and I hope it helps you as well.

Regards,

CM

 

dude- thanks for the information.. I would have never known.. I appreciate the time you took to explain it.. that syn oil is coming out next week for sure..

I have ran syn since I bought the thing.. Mobile One.. When I first cracked open the engine, I was pretty shocked at what you call 'cajun crust'.. It lives on my lifter rods, my spider, my dog bones, and the plates atop the valve springs as well as the springs themselves.. I looked at it and wondered "what oil did the previous owner use, and did he change it at regular intervals?"

Case closed.. I'm going grave robbing..

 

The easy way to find a collapsed lifter on an engine that will run is to pull the valve cover, start the engine, and just (carefully) stick a finger on each rocker until you find the one that feels like it's hammering. Hold your finger so that it's almost parallel to the rocker so that when you push down with your fingertip you don't lose contact with the rocker throughout its travel, and you'll know when you get to the punky one.

Another cute trick is to crank up a timing light with an advance **** on it and look at the rockers for each cylinder in turn with the pickup on the plug wire of the cylinder just ahead of it in the rotation (e.g. when looking at #1, put the pickup on #2). Roll the advance **** slowly to catch the stutter at the push rod end of the rocker. It's fun to do this at least once in your life, at least it is for easily entertained fools like me who just happen to have relatively obsolete timing lights lying around.

Or you could do an old school valve lash measurement which will also give you an unmistakeable indication of which lifters are out of shape -- but it's quicker to find a clatter with the calibrated shock sensing finger.

There's a cute little jig you can use to test lifters that has a weight hanging on an arm to which a rod is attached that compresses the lifter dome, but I haven't had one since my garage burned 20+ years ago. What I do now is to fill a clean can with enough new motor oil to submerge the lifter, and sink the lifter into it dome up. Then plant that on the table of drill press, and chuck an old pushrod into the drill. Then just pump the lifter up for a while, and when it's holding good and strong apply strong pressure to it and hold for a minute or so to see how it bleeds down. Doing it this way takes a bit of learning to feel what's right and what's not, but if you've got eight of 'em to do you'll know if one is significantly different from the others.

Synthetic oil. Bleh. Valvoline dino oil FTW. Our old magnum engines don't have the super tight clearances that require synthetic oil, so they don't benefit from it. Especially on a higher mileage engine, you really do need sufficient detergent in the engine oil to keep the ash in suspension -- without it that ash settles out, and those 16 little trash cans that we call lifters will catch it. With one good high RPM run to force the lifter piston deeper than it's been for quite a while, that crap gets scraped off of the bore... and here you are. You might be entertained by disassembling that lifter you removed.

 

I had figured out the clack was coming from one of the front three lifters- and most likely the #1 cylinder before I started..

When I pulled the intake and spider, I started mopping oil out of the divots between each of the lifter pairs.. then I removed the spider..

every time I go into that area, I look close for debris and foreign stuff.. and this time was no different. I had dropped a washer on the new skid plate and couldn't reach it earlier, and had a little pen shaped telescoping magnetic picker upper (that's the technical term.. or at least I'll take that to the grave with me that it is).. anyway, I couldn't reach under the push rods on the #8 cylinder, and grabbed the gadget to do so.. just to kinda rake through there and see..

Since that thing was handy, i poked it into the dome area of the bad lifter to see if there was any metal from their internals that had escaped.. At this point I had no clue how to tell if they were good or not.. On all but that one, when I tried to hover the magnet over the dome to see if anything flew from the dome to the magnetic tip they stayed in place.. On the bad one, when that magnet got close PLUNK, up it came. and stuck to the magnet..

I went back and checked the others.. they all had oil in them when I depressed them, the bad one didn't (or at least, very little oil in comparison).

I filled a little container with oil and soaked the new ones before putting them in, and depressed each dome to feel for springy.. they all seemed springy.. I did it whilst they were submerged to in effort to fill them, and it somewhat worked because they did in fact ingest oil, and become slightly more difficult to depress.. So, maybe I did sorta test them after all..


by the way, the 'bad' lifter wouldn't spring up fast enough to ingest oil is my thinking.. It would hesitate far too long in comparison to the others.. evident of a weak spring methinks..

 

i read through this post and wow. Good job filtering someof the BS comments and getting your truck running strong while maintaining everything else. Definitely a wise man to choose your battles. Nice work bud

 

Plunk against the magnet, eh? It's a purely academic matter at this point but it sounds like the spring is broken. I'd be unable to resist the temptation to take the thing apart.

I'm impressed that the push rod stayed in place. You did ensure it was nice and straight before putting it back, didn't'cha?

 

Thats some good BS stories there. Dont care what oil is used, if you over rev it things break. PERIOD. Tighter bearing clearances have nothing to do with syn and the use there of. Tolerance hasnt changed. The use of aluminum heads and blocks have. Change your oil on time and you wont have that baked on sludge. Maintenance 101.

With all the WWW crap out there you would think someone would know how to diagnose a bad lifter. Hope you installed them correctly or......lol....is that a ford guy lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9oDaMLCME

 

I've yet to look at an internal diagram/schematic/mechanical drawing of one, but I'm guessing either the spring is broken or bound, and/or something such as a seal has dissolved creating more head space than the spring was intended to travel.. Either way, I may just do that seeing as how I'm snowed in like a mug right now..

and I absolutely checked to see if anything was bent.. I had new push rods to use, but ended up deciding I liked the notion of refunded money for way over priced push rods ($12 each).. I could always swap those later.. but, there was nothing wrong with the ones in it other than having CM's 'crusty cajun' all over them.