Lifter Manufactures And Who Are They

[ProPower engines]

Hey guys
Doing some checking on lifter manufactures and I do not find all the info I am looking for so heres my question.

The standard Jobber/parts store J900 lifter for a variety of Ford Engines is what I am trying to get answers to.
While every one that sells lifters pretty much uses the same numbers for most brands
As an example who makes the Melling JB-900 lifter and who is making the 832-16 equivalent lifter for Comp there is a topline automotive number A-0900 and am FM number HT-900.
The reason for the request is I have been seeing lifters from various manufactures/rebox suppliers that have had a varying radius on the bottom of the lifter.
When a straight edge is placed on the bottom of the lifter there is little to no radius while some of the same brand have a generous amount. These are all for stock application engines yet some have been seen with the edge of the lifters that appear to have run into the ramp on the cam lobe during break in causing cam failure issues.

Now this is just a Ford lifter thing I have been seeing lately and its not the oil as joe Gibbs HR oils were used in all cases as well as meticulous attention to assembly detail but without correcting the lifter bores the absolute lifter location and angle correctness is factory machined unaltered. But they have all gone the 100K miles with factory parts and no issues.

The last engine I had an issue with I got two trays of lifters and checked the radius on all of them and picked 16 with the most radius and used them and returned the rest as defective to the warehouse.

That said I had used a set of Isky lifters in a different engine using the same type of lifter JB-900's and 3 stock cams and a 2nd complete build because all the particles from the 2 previous cams scratched up the bores bad enough I wanted to rebore again.

But after looking at the Isky Lifters and how much better they were on the bottom to keep the edge of the lifter off the lobe ramp which is really hard to get into and check how much clearance the edge of the lifter has to the ramp. The other issue I have been seeing is the lifters are noisey and won't stay pumped up.

The last engine was a 351W and the same lifters JB-00's were selected from trays for the best radius yet are still noisy and when the engine is shut off and the covers removed you could compress several of the lifters almost like there was no oil getting to them and the do get oil as the lash was set running with an idle oil pressure of 30 lbs with 15/40 oil used.

So how may lifter manufactures is there in North America that produce lifters that are reboxed and not sold under their own name such as stanadyne. I have never seen a box of their lifters sold up here and since the lifters that the warehouse sell's are in boxes of 4 they box up themselves in melling box's then write the part number on the box so we think we are getting melling lifters but we in fact may not.

I am also trying to get samples of any of these mystery lifters to compare quality so if anyone has any info as to how many manufactures/suppliers and the brand names of said manufactures I want to order 2 from each for testing purposes to see what we are being sold here.
And since there is several thousand dollars in warranty claims pending with the supplier I need to arm myself with the parts from other sources to prove the defective/low quality parts are being passed off as top quality parts.

Any Info on this will be greatly appreciated and if anyone can supply me with the unknown off brand lifters for comparison I will be glad to pay for them

Thanks for any and all consideration on this issue

Dave

[Schurkey]

Thousands and thousands of years ago, there were four companies making lifters, and four hundred buying in bulk and re-boxing.

Delco/Delphi
Stanadyne
Eaton
Johnson

http://www.hbassociates.us/Lifters.html

Far as I know, Eaton and Stanadyne went out of business, Johnson went TU, but was then resurrected, and Delco got it's name changed to Delphi, and had some ownership/management issues.

God only knows how the Communist Chinese and their American "Communist Collaborators" have polluted the pool. Morel makes roller lifters, Isky too, and maybe Crower as well...but I don't think they make flat-tappets. I suppose there are others, but I don't know about them.

[ProPower engines]

Thanks for the page of exploded views of lifters.

Yes Eaton And Stanadyne are gone and Johnson is now Hylift Johnson a div of Topline Automotive and then there's Delphi.
While they both make lifters for GM the Delphi lifters are considered top of the line for OEM applications but I can't get any info to confirm they only do GM lifters. If they were doing a ford lifter line I would consider using Delphi only.
Isky has a contract with Hylift johnson to build all there lifters to their spec's but there seems like there is no other maker of FT lifters for fords Then Hylift Johnson.
And while the Delphi lifter has distinctive markings the lifters that comp sells do not share those same markings so they must be Hylift Johnson or maybe with all the off shore products we are seeing these days and the fact that almost all companies like comp etc. are out sourcing to other parts of the world to make products.

Thanks again for the info and if anyone else has any thing feel free to speak up.

[lorax]

There is also Scorpion

[ProPower engines]

There is also Scorpion

Do they manufacture their own Flat tappet hydraulic lifters in house??

[rally]

I believe the old Johnson Lifters are still being made. Last time i knew it was known as Top Line Hy-Lift Johnson. Johnson Lifters were one of the best in the market. I think they are located yet in Muskegon Mich.

[ProPower engines]

I believe the old Johnson Lifters are still being made. Last time i knew it was known as Top Line Hy-Lift Johnson. Johnson Lifters were one of the best in the market. I think they are located yet in Muskegon Mich.

Yes Hy-lift/Johnson is a div. of topline automotive and they are still in the same location in Michigan.

[lorax]

There is also Scorpion

Do they manufacture their own Flat tappet hydraulic lifters in house??

Yes. don't hold me to were the casting comes from. They claim thats propreitary. But they machine them in house. I ran a set of their short travel hyd flat tappet with a very shallow preload and they did what I expected of them.

[Schurkey]

There is also Scorpion

Do they manufacture their own Flat tappet hydraulic lifters in house??

Yes. don't hold me to were the casting comes from. They claim thats propreitary.

That can't be good news.

First Guess: Proprietary = Somewhere they aren't proud of, which is why it's a secret. If we knew, we'd distrust the product.

[lorax]

Yes. don't hold me to were the casting comes from. They claim thats propreitary.

That can't be good news.

First Guess: Proprietary = Somewhere they aren't proud of, which is why it's a secret. If we knew, we'd distrust the product.

I guess you could say the same thing about Carralloy, SPS Carrbolt, or if it only applies to suspected import steels, West Yorkshire Steel U.K. EN30B steel.
You can look at that any number of ways.

[Racer X]

Thousands and thousands of years ago, there were four companies making lifters, and four hundred buying in bulk and re-boxing.

Delco/Delphi
Stanadyne
Eaton
Johnson

http://www.hbassociates.us/Lifters.html

Far as I know, Eaton and Stanadyne went out of business, Johnson went TU, but was then resurrected, and Delco got it's name changed to Delphi, and had some ownership/management issues.

God only knows how the Communist Chinese and their American "Communist Collaborators" have polluted the pool. Morel makes roller lifters, Isky too, and maybe Crower as well...but I don't think they make flat-tappets. I suppose there are others, but I don't know about them.

This is why I've been trying to convince the WISSOTA tech inspector that the Chrysler lifters in my chevy block ARE of the same "manufacture" as the chevy liffters.

[rick7343]

NOt sure that knowing who made them will answer all your issues...

Back in my younger trucking days, I used to haul a lot of auto parts and a lot of parts came from the same plants with different names on the boxes.

Who's name went on the box was decided by who's specs they were made to sometimes.... and sometimes by the quality of the part...

These days, it's just like you are suspecting, there is a lot of re-packageing for profit. To the parts switcher, they all look the same, so they must be...

Should be a law...

My last cam didn't survive break in... half the lifters were destroyed on the bottom...

[wyrmrider]

Back when Isky ran out of the Hyd VW lifters he ws quoted 50,000 for minimum order.
Needless to say no more Hyd VW lifters since.
If someone is not ordering in quantity they are just reboxing or an in-house rebuild programme
Is anyone hand tweeking lifters these days?

[ProPower engines]

Back in the dat when speedpro had 2 lifter part numbers I used to get the std. number abd index the internals.
I think it was HT817R which was their HP lifter and a HT817 was the reg. lifter. They both had the hardness check mark on the bottom but the std. lifter was machine assembled the "R" lifter was hand assembled.

But today I still check some but I mostly use the Isky lifter. While they are a bit more money its still worth it to avoid getting mismatched internals other brands seem to have issues with,

[plovett]

Do they manufacture their own Flat tappet hydraulic lifters in house??

Yes. don't hold me to were the casting comes from. They claim thats propreitary.

That can't be good news.

First Guess: Proprietary = Somewhere they aren't proud of, which is why it's a secret. If we knew, we'd distrust the product.

X2. There's no reason to keep a secret unless you are ashamed of it. I personally will pay considerably more money for a quality American made product. If I was making such a product I would shout it out to the world.

JMO,

paulie