Beware the "Cheap" Hydraulic Lifters....

[vwlover77]

Sometimes you never know what kind you will get, but if you have a choice, be sure to specify the Febi brand lifters. They are the ones with the circlip on the top instead of the wire clip.

They have a different internal design than the "standard" lifter, which I believe resists bleeding down and becoming air-bound better than the "standard" design.

Also, I've had two of the "standard" design lifters fail within a few hundred miles of brand new. In both cases, the internal spring had broken.

Standard design:
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Febi design: (from ratwell.com)
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[Amskeptic]

These circlips/lock rings get beaten to death by incorrect centering.

Make sure you are past 1 1/4 at the very least 1 1/2 is better, and I like to do this job with a warm engine to not only help get the lifters pumped up, but to give you slightly more of a margin. If the valve train "shrinks" below the travel limit of the lifter, the push rod socket will hammer the circlip/lock ring.

The quality issues with lifters, for me, is the surface hardening of the base against the cam lobe. My Bus Depot Febi lifters/in-house camshaft, did not like each other and the lifters were eaten at 67,000 miles. Pissed me off too. I have NEVER had a metallurgical failure with VW factory cams and lifters.
Colin

[vwlover77]

Good point on the lifter/cam interface... who made the original VW part?

I would have thought the clip would be the weak point too, but in my case, it was the plunger spring!

[Amskeptic]

I would have thought the clip would be the weak point too, but in my case, it was the plunger spring!

Aww heck. That is evidence of too much valve train expansion, like a hot engine shoving the lifter plunger to the bottom. . . . or perhaps just lousy springs with little scratches that turn into fatigue fractures. I dunno.
Colin

[vwlover77]

I cannot believe it. I replaced the lifter with the broken spring today, and after less than 30 minutes of driving and idling, ANOTHER one broke - right next to the one I just replaced. Took it out, took it apart, and sure enough the spring was broken. That makes 3 broken lifter springs in less than 200 miles since the engine was resintalled last fall with new cam and lifters.

I'm going to have to have another talk with my engine builder.....Lord, I dread that....

[Amskeptic]

I cannot believe it. I replaced the lifter with the broken spring today, and after less than 30 minutes of driving and idling, ANOTHER one broke - right next to the one I just replaced. Took it out, took it apart, and sure enough the spring was broken. That makes 3 broken lifter springs in less than 200 miles since the engine was resintalled last fall with new cam and lifters.

I'm going to have to have another talk with my engine builder.....Lord, I dread that....

Be ready for his hot accusation that you centered your lifters too biased towards the bottom. If you honest-to-God have never screwed those things down past 1 1/2 from true zero clearance (not the ham-handed squish the hell out of the rocker arm but ther delicate clicky click method), give him hell for putting aftermarket trash in your engine.
Colin

[vwlover77]

Believe it or not, he has agreed to replace all 8 lifters, with the newer design style with the circlip retainer. We'll see...

Having had these lifters apart, even if the lifter is mashed to its limit, there is a hard-stop of the piston contacting a shoulder in the lifter body which should prevent the spring from carrying the entire load of the valve spring.

It was his initial adjustment of the lifters which is now failing. On the ones I have done, I use a very light touch on the adjustment screw to find the point of contact, and go 1 1/4 turns from there.

I think they are aftermarket junk parts. When my first lifter collapsed last fall, he did mention he was going to talk to his supplier about it becuase he had always received the circlip-retainer style previously. (That is what he installed the first time, with the old camshaft.)