David L. Lutz

I made the decision several weeks ago just to replace the lifters... I did disassemble several lifters and check many others, but just was not confident enough to reuse the ones I had apart.
For me, the center piston was very hard to reassemble as the retaining ring was damaged.
If you will give me your address I will send you a couple of lifters that I did not check or screw up. I should end up with oh say 20 - 25 old lifters that are probably fine. I didn't find any varnish or crud in any of the ones I took apart.

Rob Edwards

I have been cleaning my '91 lifters this weekend after reading Greg's mention of the little shelf inside the lifter and his sonicator. I happen to have a lab sonicator that was getting tossed, so I did a little experiment. First I blew out the piston assembly using compressed air- No matter how much oil you think you've drained, there's a bunch more in there. So I put the lifters in the parts cleaner, oriented so I could watch the mineral spirits flowing out the inlet hole:



I let each one sit in the flow for 2-3 minutes, so there should be no gunk left inside, right?

Wrong- Next I put each lifter one by one in a 1:3 dilution of simple green, placing the lifter into the solution on its head first to fill it with liquid and then with the inlet hole pointing up. As soon as I hit the power button, this little volcano of nasty gunk comes shooting out of the inlet hole. You can see it in the 2nd beaker from the left. After 2-3 minutes, the gunk stops, so I pulled them out, rinsed in running water and dried immediately with compressed air.



I think they're clean enough now. Maybe.