Sadly it all boils down to the company making money for shareholders and being competitive in the market. I remember when Japan quality = junk. Now if someone said these lifters are made in Japan you would most likely be happy and confident in their quality or heck even Mexico.

 

Agree, It is all about profit, not quality and testing products. I highly recommend spending more and buying quality American made parts.

 

BBC have always been a problem with anything other than a stock 200 duration .420 lift cam. I stopped using flat tappets in BBC in the 1980's.
Don't ignore the fact that the USA has lots of counterfeit parts being sold here, too.
"China" has been making engines for use in OE applications for 25 years, millions and millions of engines, to ignore their ability is not being fair to those there that work hard to deliver a quality product.

 

BBC have always been a problem with anything other than a stock 200 duration .420 lift cam. I stopped using flat tappets in BBC in the 1980's.
Don't ignore the fact that the USA has lots of counterfeit parts being sold here, too.
"China" has been making engines for use in OE applications for 25 years, millions and millions of engines, to ignore their ability is not being fair to those there that work hard to deliver a quality product.

BBC have always been a problem with anything other than a stock 200 duration .420 lift cam. I stopped using flat tappets in BBC in the 1980's.
Don't ignore the fact that the USA has lots of counterfeit parts being sold here, too.
"China" has been making engines for use in OE applications for 25 years, millions and millions of engines, to ignore their ability is not being fair to those there that work hard to deliver a quality product.

I know many GM parts are made in Taiwan, but, I feel their quality is good. China, I know is not. I hear many manufacturers are turning to China parts. Look at all the recalls of new automobiles. I watched an episode of Nick's Garage on YouTube. He was breaking in a flat tappet engine on the dyno and was very careful and did it with light springs and even did it twice. Second time with the stock type heavier springs. I could tell he was very concerned about the engine.
I saw a comment about China roller cams, maybe true, but, I'm running a Lunati roller street cam 20110711 and Morel retrofit lifters BB817RF. Both made in the USA.

 

Ya think a roller cam from china is any better?
Nope.
Still fails.....
People over make good stuff too, same as people in the USA make junk as well.

 

How do or did the lifters fit their bores?

 

Came here to ask this as well. 80% of the cam blanks are made in China these days. The fact that three failed in his motor suggests to me that maybe it has nothing to do with Chinese parts in this case.

I have run plenty of Chinese cams/lifters without a single failure. I would look to the lifter bores first.

 

I did check the lifters in each bore. They easily went in and were easy to spin with my finger tip on the outer edge of the lifter body. I knew to make sure they weren't tight in the bores. At tear down after the lifter failure, about 12 of the 16 lifters were not spinning.

 

Did you install all the lifters, mark their tops with a paint dot on one edge, then rotate the camshaft and ensure all the lifters rotated more or less the same amount?
Swap the fastest one with a slower one, swap them around, try to get them all about the same but it is critical that they all rotate some..... a lifter that doesn't rotate during this test will fail.

This seems to have become super critical to check now days. Along with verifying the lifter face finish and lifter face crown/radius.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't know to do this until after I had problems. That's a procedure I never had to do before, but, I agree, it must be done now. I imagine if you get a lifter that won't spin in any bore, you can replace it, as long as the problem isn't the cam lobe. My springs were double springs with 120lbs seat pressure. I could have tried breaking the cam in with only the outer spring, but again, it wasn't necessary before. I am also using Valvoline VR1 racing oil that has zinc in it. But again, the extra for a roller was well worth it.

 

there was a machinist here before ( Carl H) He was adamant about machining lifter bores as part of a block blue print. A lot of people get their parts and start assembling,,,
It takes a least 3 or 4 trial assemblies to get everything right. Of course the less powerful engines can get away with lesser quality parts and assembly blue printing. If you put it together and it fails you know who to blame

 

My belief is, the basic problem with Chinese workers at most levels is they see their job as getting a container filled and on a ship. Why would they care about much more than that? It is not coming back to them. It's really up to Sealed Power, for example, to make sure that standards are being held and we see stories such as this letting us know they are not reliable. I bought a Chev throwout bearing in the last year from a U.S. company that for a particular reason I chose to rinse the thick grease out of and when I did it ran like something you'd be replacing, not a new part...closer inspection revealed the Made in China print, thank-heaven that is at-least required of imported parts no matter what name is on the box. The company says of-course their quality is high and they stand behind it but crap is crap...who is the guy who gets to pull his trans back out and replace that after a few months or a year, whether-or-not some warranty is in effect?

Then, I recently bought a brand-new Made-in-USA fan clutch for my Jeep that went only a few minutes before producing a grinding noise and, that-quickly, was fit for the scrap bin. So I was supposed to head out on a vacation trip with that, thinking I'd short-stopped some potential problem by my purchase? All this is the drag when it comes to fixing up old cars...in most cases you of-course can't make your own parts so you hand money to companies to provide them and there is a significant chance that wherever they came from they're garbage...the manufacturer knows that much or most of the defective stuff they sell will not be returned to them so they consider what is to be just a cost of doing business, beyond that why worry about it.

OEM parts fit to new cars only work as well as they do because failures will come back in the form of a vehicle at the service dept. and a bill to the company. Even then when buying "OEM" parts at the dealer I've had poor luck at times, it's like the parts that came out good went on cars and the ones that didn't went to the service parts warehouse.

Yes this is just more griping but it's all worth taking into consideration when you're shopping or making decisions.

 

China made stuff can vary and sad to say at least 25 percent of my motor is China made stuff because with one the cost of things, and two being what is available. My crank and rods are Scat but were excellent quality over the last ten plus years I have used them and my pistons are at least U.S. made. My Edelbrock intake says made in America but I have heard quality problems on even some of them over the years and you don't know what you can get regardless if its made in the U.S. Quality control went out the doors years ago.

Nowadays its about quantity control and push the stuff out the door and worry about quality control and manufacturing issues later. My valve covers are made in China along with my distributor and even my Holley carb you know is made from China. Its hard to get hardly anything American made and even if it is most likely its from Mexico and assembled in the U.S. Good stuff with excellent quality control went away with American jobs as the factories wanted more money versus offering high quality products like they did back in the early 80's and before.

Had an American GE refrigerator made in the mid 70's that my Grandparents bought before I was born and it lasted for 40 years with only two minor things needing replaced on it during its time. After that the new so called big name brand fridge we got did not even get ten years out of it before it was dead.

All across the board its hard to get a lot of anything decent nowadays.

 

Holley carbs Made in China? Please tell me it ain't so.

 

There is a GE refrigerator factory near my home. I have know two engineers that work there, both were charged with coming up with ways to make the product last through warranty and not much more. There reason many products don't have good durability is because they were designed to fail.

 

I agree with that as they want people to keep coming back sooner versus later in order for them to buy more. Its hard to even be able to get a repairman these days versus the old days when you could get TV's fixed along with other electronics and such but in this day and age its basically once it breaks its a throwaway item and just buy a new one so many years.

Same thing with cars as they don't make them to last body wise at least up here in the rust belt area of Ohio your lucky to see any car without rotting panels and stuff flapping in the wind on anything 5 years or older. The motors and transmissions on a lot of vehicles can see up to 250,000 miles and still run good if kept up well but the bodies are always in poor shape and a lot of times rot through as they have to make the metal so paper thin in order to keep meeting increasing EPA standards.

 

Man, that sucks. But even many of the roller lifters are made by the lowest ChiCom bidder. Mike Jones at Jones Cam Designs says he uses only Hylift Johnson which are USA made. You might want to google "CamKing hylift johnson" to find discussions on the subject at Speed-Talk.com.

 

Morel roller lifters are made in the USA. Selling under the names of Melling, Lunati and Erson. They are in my 454 and zero problems with them. I would be concerned about Howards and Comp Cams being so cheap. I wonder where they're made.

 

Does not matter anymore. Even from reputable companies, they are supplying Chinese junk. I can't count how many engine and trans bearings I have had to sand to get them to fit. I bought 4 sets from 4 companies. Us companies and none fit. And yes I mic'd them 3 times and they were stamped with what I needed.

 

I don't have any data to support or deny the Chinese reputation, but it seems pretty unlikely that a Cam manufacturer thinks they can sell cams and then have to replace them for free along with another set of lifters......cheaper than they can sell a decent set of lifters for. It doesn't make sense financially. I'm not trying to say that this has never been the case, but only that if it was a wholesale repetitive problem thats their fault.....its something they are going to fix. It happens to every cam manufacturer...........yet they are ALL ok with it........or is it US doing something wrong?

That said, I think one of the main problems is lifter rotation, or the lack of it..........and spring pressure. A light honing with a small brake hone to remove any glazing or roughness and the use of some lighter duty springs during breakin will most likely prevent an issue. Flat tappet cams and lifters have had a known problem with break in long before the Chinese glut. I may be wrong in my assessment, but if all the cam and lifter metalurgy is bad from the gitgo, then why not a 100% failure rate? Yes an ocassional batch might get heat treated incorrectly, but you have to believe that most of them work OK or the cam company would shortly be out of business.

I think one of the big differences today is that we now have the internet and its very easy to speculate about things and be aware of an issue. I mean, if someone has a problem.......thousands of people hear about it instantly. Thats great IF there really is a problem.............but why would the cam manufacturers ignore it ?

Anyway, I'm just "speculatin" like everyone else.......but I think the availability of information these days may be magnifying a problem that always existed.

 

I would second checking the Lifter bores, because those were not spinn

 

I guess one needs to realize that the whole of western technology has been given to China for cheap labor and no environmental restrictions. There were initial problems like remember how the GE and Philip’s light bulbs you bought at Home Depot in the 1990’s burnt out in a couple evenings but that got solved. Early Chinese head’s tended to leak coolant and drop seat inserts, that got solved. The long held belief that the Chinese copied American cylinder head’s rather avoids the question that along with most American companies that ran to China there should be at least the consideration that American head makers are trying out china’s ability to make head’s. If you fire up your search engine to seek out Chinese cylinder head manufacturers you will quickly discover they make head’s for just about every engine made on the planet. You then have to consider that either this is a huge market the Chinese discovered on their own or maybe a consortium of western manufacturers decided that it’s a good idea to put this rather dirty and labor intensive manufacturing somewhere with low environmental expectations and cheap costs. Talk about a liberal and conservative wet dream. The libs don’t have to see the pollution while the neocons make two fisted money with no clean up and cheap labor. The Chinese commies get a 30 to 50 year boost in their state of art technical base, a ton of infrastructure and boat loads of cash! What could go possibly wrong with this win-win-win?

Anyway off the subject of cam and lifters lost. I’m in the camp that crap happens in manufacturing processes whether the maker is in America, Mexico, or China. At this point all the potential hardware sources are pretty much on the same technical level and all have their bad days for what ever reason. When you get building into what would be the wants or needs of a race engine then the best advice I can offer is spend you money with a vendor that will financially stand behind the product. This I suppose applies to any level of build, but the lower the stress level in the machine the greater are your chances of getting away with no-name sourced parts that the vendor doesn’t stand behind with some form of compensation.

Bogie

 

Very well said, Bogie. The whole concept of saying "chinese stuff is all junk" is 1970s thinking. They have come light years ahead of where they were. There are some things I specifically seek out the Chinese part because they are just as good but cheaper.

... the reason WHY they're cheaper is still a source of contention for me, but often the parts themselves are just fine.

 

India is replacing China as the source for cheap consumer goods, including auto parts. The lack of formal education in India will prevent them from doing complicated manufacture.

 

Johnson and Hy Lift Johnson are often confused for the same but they are NOT.

 

I have the set of small block chevy Howards aka Morel hydraulic roller lifters that cost $800 bucks when I bought them and I can say they are a bit noisy when first started up but quiet down as they get warm. As far as Holly goes there quality control is not a lot to be desired on recent carbs made in the last 6 plus years. I have had to fix every single one of the Holley brand carbs of the vacuum secondary and double pumper variety on the boosters being installed loose to the point you could just wiggle them side to side with your finger easily. The Quick fuel brand of carbs since Holley took them over has been ok for the most part but Holley has cheapened them out as I can tell the difference between when Quick fuel made them versus Holley. At least there boosters are tight when I have gotten them and better casting.

Now the air bleeds is another story on the Quick fuel carbs since Holley took them over. The last several ones I have gotten I have had to replace the air bleeds on 6 different ones to correct them for the proper size of a correct starting point to be able to run with. Its a crap shot nowadays regardless on what you buy regardless of it being auto parts or anything else. Today its more about quanity control versus the old days of quality control.

 

A guy should be able to sue a company for an engine that failed because the new parts were not made correctly if you can sue a store for your stupidity for falling down. SHOULD be able to.

 

The singular mantra is “Return On Share Holder Investment“ or “Return on Share Holder Value” add to that “Value Added” The return to share holder speaks for itself as ‘mo money fasta’. Value Added became the mantra of a manufacturer making detail parts is a cost not a value. The value is in final assembly and sales for and of a well known mane brand. GE died on this sword and Boeing is in the process. Everybody practices it such that detail parts are procured from the lowest bidder from anywhere in the world. The fact that Chrysler is using and selling as spares MoPar parts is no assurance that Chrysler had anything to do with making that part other than specifying the dimensions and this holds true for every final assembly maker ie name brand in the world not just Chrysler. “Made In America” labels only mean that final assembly was accomplished in the United States, it has nothing to do with where the details came from.

Bogie

 

Watched a Roadkill Garage episode a few weeks ago were they replaced a failed BBC flat tappet cam and lifters with CompCams roller cam and lifters. Almost immediately, one of the roller lifters failed -- the plunger got cocked sideways in its bore. Comp sent them a new set of higher quality lifters and said they had lots of problems with the ones they had sent originally. David Freiburger also contacted other cam companies who said they had similar problems. Not sure where these companies are sourcing roller lifters, but it's more than a bit scary.

 

It all boils down to the manufacturing facilities and the guidelines they operate under.
Next time Look for the ISO certification on the parts youre buying
No ISO cert ....no purchase. First line of statement = quality............
Everyone should be paying attention to this

Manufacturing ISO standards are guidelines set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to ensure product quality, safety, and efficiency in manufacturing processes, with key standards including ISO 9001 (Quality Management), ISO 14001 (Environmental Management), and ISO 45001 (Occupational Health & Safety). These standards help businesses streamline operations, reduce risks, improve customer satisfaction, and gain a competitive advantage by promoting best practices

 

I hear that on Chinese parts. Watched shop I was at a jeep cane in with a cracked radiator tank. New one came in i installed it filled it and VOALA new one leaked in the exact same Spot.
As far as cams though I think its all about lifter rotation. And I also dont like the quick ramp extreme energy style cams i think that has a bit to do with it to. Slamming the lifter up suddenly but tgats my opinion.
Sorry for the monster size text....I dont know what happened or how to change it lol

 

Glad my engine building days are over. Haven't built one since 2015, and I used a real GM roller cam and lifters.

When I worked on Saturdays for an engine builder that specialized in 383s, we used lots of SCAT cranks, mostly what they called "cast steel". Also their 5140 and 4340 rods. Have to say those things were machined perfectly. I think they were cast/forged in China, and final-finished in California. That was almost 25 years ago, so who knows about their quality today?

But I wouldn't even consider a cam or lifters, flat tappet or roller, that came from China or India. They should stick with stamped parts like mounting brackets.

I installed my last flat tappet cam somewhere around 2002, probably 20-25K miles ago, and it's still working great in my old pickup. The kit was Summit branded, with cam & lifters probably made in the US. Have yet to hear a tick-tick-tick in all those years, even after weeks of sitting.