WOW, over the years I have watched literally every video on RU-vid about the “Hemi tick” and the hemi lifter/ cam issues, and every video was long and made by Hemi and Mopar experts and none of those videos were satisfying nor even had pen-pointed the issue… now here comes Mr. Powell with the very best video on the subject, effortlessly diagnosing the problem and explaining it to where a child could make sense of it…. And you’re not even a Mopar head!!! You explaining the oiling system was awesome. I’m in shock that they oil the lifter last with the oil coming *from* the pushrod. How backwards is that!?!? 👏👏👏 Bravo
UTG had the same observation. I really never realized mopars feed lifters through the pushrods, despite owning a dodge with 318 long enough to tear the top end down for a burned valve. Other than that, the 318 ran good and mileage was fantastic. Drove that thing around a long time.
@@thisisyourcaptainspeaking2259the magnums feed the lifters through a gallery. They use AMC type lifters, even if they are roller. The magnums don't have a shaft rocker, it's pedestal rockers like hydraulic 302/351.
I retired from Chrysler after over 35 years as a tech. I have replaced untold numbers of cams and lifters in these engines, and yes, most were in fact police package cars. The oiling system is passable on everyday and traffic driving, but the police cars sit and idle on the side of the highways for hours at a time, then jump on the throttle when they start a chase. The extended idling makes for a low oil feeding to the valvetrain and the sudden load of a full throttle launch makes for a low oil presence situation on the lifters and cam. The results are obvious, and well documented all over the media. Your brief and spot on accurate description here is one of the best and easiest to comprehend examples I've seen anywhere.
my hemi ram pickup has 20K miles on it.. its 2 years and a few months old.. I have spent hours and hours idling it as during covid it was my mobile office when I couldnt use my monile office bus.. and it has the dreaded Hemi tick... at 20K miles.. with lots of idling... the truck has never pulled a trailer a day in its life.. its hauled a few loads of firewood and parts for my restoration bus projects but really light use... and it ticks at startup really loud and then is a mild tick the rest of the time.. my 1978 School bus with an Inernational 392 thats never been aparthas a quieter engine...
After watching your video and listening to your explanation it's no surprise these lifters are failing. Thank you for continuing to post some of the most informative and helpful content on this platform. Wishing you and your family good health and fortune in the New Year to come.
I have a cleveland that had a rocker fail thr beat up the lifter. I reached out to get a new set and they came with a slot from the hole down to the gallery slot. It looked like drill drift. The shop im using said they were trash. I called the maker and he said that clevelands don't get the oil they need up top and this helps. So when you mentioned the slot down to the roller.. the light went on. Love this! I feel like I'm in shop class
Well I've often heard people say "oh you shouldn't mess with the standard set up, the manufacturer knows best" Yeah it's true the manufacturer may actually know best, but knowing best and doing the best are two different things. Manufacturers do all kinds of crazy, poorly engineered things for all kinds of reasons, they don't necessarily have performance and longevity in mind. It's great to see a simple, straightforward analysis of one of these crazy things they have done.
I had a 2004 Ram 1500 that collapsed two lifters when I started it up. Still under warranty and the dealer replaced the heads, then set the electronic governor to 1500 rpm in park. They implied that I was revving it up and racing. I’ve since sold it and bought a 2005 Ram 2500 with 5.9 Cummins. I’m happy now.
I sure am glad I ran across Powell Machine Inc...Because all I want to hear is the TRUTH...and apparently that's what were gonna get. Thank you for taking the time to educate the novice and the so called smarty pants alike. I will be a regular viewer.
Excessive idle time seems to be the number one killer on these. They do get some splash oil once the rpm comes up around 2K but if it's sitting there at idle for 30-40 mins they get dry. Also Melling has a hard coat anodized HV oil pump that is supposed to be way better than the OEM pumps and it may help hide the issue. I say hide because more oil isn't really fixing it.. I agree something needs done about the lifter design it's self. That all being said... I still love my Hemi's :)
@IhateRU-vid That's what I've always told people. That and making sure to keep the oil topped up and changed regularly. I've got well over 200,000miles on my 2011 Durango Hemi and it's still going strong but then I'm a 20-30min drive each way to work. A solid 10 mins of that I'm going 50mph. It gets a chance to run at full operational temperature and burn off all the moisture and crap.
@@eurbanautotech My 2011 SRT8 Challenger is at 90K right now. I installed the blower myself at 42k miles. I change the oil every 6K with Mobil1 0-40 Euro Car Spec. I don't idle it excessively and MDS has basically never been used since I am always in Auto Stick mode and when I did the blower I disabled MDS in the tune. So far so good! I doubt mine will go 200K making 650 at the wheels. I will probably be doing a 426 block at some point in the future... So if Daniel has an updated lifter by that time, I will go that route plus that Melling Hard Anodized HV Oil Pump too. Extra insurance :) My 04 Ram (Non MDS) went 150K before I had to take it off the road due to rust. The Hemi was still going strong.
The local machinist that has been doing all of my work (turning cranks, etc.) didn't go into such detail, but in a nutshell told that the oiling system is trash/a poor design. Thank you for breaking it down and showing every little nuance as to why it's so bad.
My new friend, you are awesome at explaining and teaching, thank you for your expertise.Ive been wrenching for a long time been to many machinists, and i would be proud to have you as my machinist. Richard.
I heard from a trusted source / friend who’s a die-hard Mopar guy that was very much “in the loop” back when the Gen.III Hemi and the 4.7 were being developed to replace the old LA / Magnum engines that the Gen-3 Hemi was supposed to be a DOHC design when they started development but eventually they modified it to a cam-in-block pushrod setup instead for packaging and cost reasons instead. He never mentioned the issues with lifter oiling that you mention here but if what he says is true then the whole “top down” valvetrain oiling design you showed us here makes a lot more sense….if that top end oil gallery and supply holes were originally designed to feed oil to cam journals and hydraulic lash adjusters up top it seems like it would work pretty well. Sending the oil through the rocker shafts then back down the push rods to the lifters is definitely an unconventional and inefficient way of doing it, and like you mentioned the placement of the “tube” for top end oiling blocking much of the splash lubrication the cam and lifter rollers would usually get just compounds the problem. It’s definitely an interesting issue to think on.
*I remember someone mentioning that it costed Mopar more to produce the 4.7 SOHC than the Hemi.* So maybe that is why they got rid of the 4.7 I had a 4.7 in a Dakota and a Durango. I thought they were pretty good for the small size. Stock turned 6k and with a SC Tuner it redlined at 7k (it ran out of power before the 7k upper limit). Now with a Hemi Jeep I am wondering why my redline is like 5800 or whatever. Feels like my Hemi wants to rev more but instead slams into that lame limiter. I am wondering how high they can safely go (stock) if I got a tuner.
Thank you! I do not know much about the Hemi Engine but I did know that there is a problem with worn cam lobes. After your explanation it is very obvious why there would be problems! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights I appreciate it! 👍💯
Good stuff and good attitude. Where you are sure you say so; where you are not sure you say so. You have good knowledge but also admit you don't know it all. Well done. Keep it up. Retired mechanic/machinist in Land Down Under.
6:12 "Third grade nonsense"... :) True that, Daniel! This ridiculous oil system makes hydraulic flat tappet cams look good: the oil flows from the lifter through the pushrod to the rockers.
You are 100% wrong. PRESSURIZED oil is fed to the lifter bodies DIRECTLY thru the two oil galleries on each side of the camshaft. The rocker shaft & rockers & the pushrod sockets are fed oil up thru the heads and rocker pedestals pretty much like Chrysler has done since the '50's. The biggest difference is the hollow pushrods which started around '90 with the Magnum SB's.
I believe your thinking is correct, good explanation. I was looking at a diagram of the hemi oiling system and I had an idea. I'm older than you and remember my friends who ran fords in the 60's-70's at the dragstrip sometimes plugged the factory oil passages and ran internal or external tubes to feed the rocker shafts directly from a main passage and also to keep more oil flowing into the cam bearings and lifters. Chrysler seemed to make a simple system more complicated. Good video
This is exactly why I would rather have an old school 426 hemi. Have to remember that 105 degree angle in rush hour stop and go adds to the low pressure with bad geometry problems just daily driving.
Thanks Daniel, Thats just a crazy way to get oil in a lifter. I was not aware it was done that way. Todays vehicles have way more miles on them. Worn out rockers and shafts would obviously lead to lifter problems. Thanks for the video lesson !!!
Great analysis. I had no idea. I ignorantly thought they worked the way almost all other engines work. Thank you for doing the research in a thoughtful and methodical way that anyone can follow. Happy New Year!
Hey Daniel, great info on these Hemi's, of which I own one. I've watched another Dodge Tech's RU-vid channel (Reignited - Cycle and Automotive) and Skylar has mashed this topic out quite a bit. His conclusion is that it is low oil pressure, especially when idling for extended periods of time...like in service vehicles, which causes the majority of problems with lifters. He states that the 6.2 Hellcat engines are not suffering lifter failures, like the 5.7's and the 6.4's. He's narrowed the culprit to the oil pump. The 5.7 and 6.4 share the same pump, but the 6.2 Hellcat engine has a thicker rotor in its pump. He goes on to show how a Hellcat pump, or the Moroso high-volume replacement unit, provides MUCH higher pressure at idle speeds. Some of the weaker pumps are indicating only about 18psi at idle. If your theory on the oiling circuit is accurate then that would explain the lack of proper oil getting to the lifters & rollers at idle. My 5.7 idles at ~35PSI so I'm lucky to have a "good" pump and, according to my latest Blackstone Labs oil analysis, I have no metal or contaminates in my oil. I also have a 6-speed Challenger, so no MDS. Believe it or not, I change my full-synthetic Castrol oil once per year. I only put about 8000 miles on it annually. I also use Wix XP filters exclusively. My car just rolled 83000 on the odometer. You and Sky should collaborate on the subject. Being a Dodge tech, he can validate your explanation of the oiling circuit.
I still remember leak down testing all GM lifters with Kent Moore specific setup and then knowing every lifters was primed, we never had any ticking issues back then as you would pick up a faulty one before it went in, we would do this for just about every make of engine and lifter eventually as failure rate was zero with this method for lifters and cams, also the quality aspect of starting engine with no ticking noises was an expectation put on use as was starting first time with no backfires and idling correctly as it was also and expectation that if you put cam and lifters in you would time the distributor correctly too .
I have just purchased a 2015 Grand Cherokee with the 5.7. Only 14,000 miles on it, but all slow city driving, then unused for 5 years. I have ordered the Melling 10452HV oil pump and will use Penrite 5W-30 10 Tenths racing oil, change every 3,500 miles. I hope this will give me a long life engine.
Again, great analysis. One thing is that I've heard you say "oil gallery" many times and it tweaked my ears because of the second word. I'm 61 and rebuilt my first SBC at 16. I guess I first heard or read it as "oil galley" and then probably heard it repeated like that or read it like that numerous times. Some research proves that my instinct was wrong. It's "oil gallery," as you say. Although I pronounce "oil" quite a bit differently than you do. LoL, But that's neither here nor there. I learn quite a bit on your channel! Thanks!
I’ve heard it pronounced “oilyul” mostly from up north. Southerners usually pronounce it “oil” without the extra syllable. Not saying one is correct and the other wrong. Just different.
I have a 2005 Ram 1500 4x4 with the 5.7. I purchased this truck new in January of 2006 with 8 miles on the odometer. For the first 30k miles I used conventional oil { non synthetic} and changed it every 5k miles. When I made the change to synthetic, I chose Royal Purple 5w20 for the seal properties. I am telling you folks all this to make this point. My original engine has 430k miles and I still drive it everyday. Most folks that hear this say that I just got lucky a received a "good" one. This truck still has the original starter. I do not let it idle excessively, other than 5 or so minutes in the am. My question is, could my success be coming from my choice in motor oil?
Taking care of stuff goes a long way, my 89 Silverado had 300k when I sold it, ran great, my shop truck (dodge 2500 cummins) has 400k, runs perfect, so maintaining and common sense can go a long way, but the lifter still oils backwards and it's just not a good design
I am dodge ram jeep shop foreman. We do alot of lifter failures in police cars and agriculture trucks. I think a lot has to do with maintenance. I have noticed very few failures on properly maintained vehicles. The farm vehicles and public service vehicles around here are rarely serviced on time. I do believe the oiling down from the pushrod is a poor design as well. I know why they did it but it still is questionable
Hello. I like your work and videos. I've rebuilt several of these hemi's. If I had the resources, I would drill out the oil tube casting galley area and install small nozzles to spray the oil upward towards the cam lobes. I believe that would be the cure for the lifter failures problem. Oiling from the push rods down is the first thing I discovered and hated from the first one I ever rebuilt. Have a great day and a happy New Year!
Great content. I think focusing on the design differences between earlier gen 3 hemis years 04-08 Vs the 09- to current would be the first place to start. The earlier hemis did not have this problem. You explain some of the differences in this video. And all which probably lend to lower Idle oil pressure on the later hemis causing high rates of failures to cam and lifters.
I was just wondering that myself. I’ve got a 2020 rebel with the 5.7. At hot idle my RPM sits at 525-550 at best and 31 psi oil pressure. I’m curious what the factory idle RPM was on those early models? The early engines also used a different oil pump. I left a comment up top with a thought about not being able to find any examples of a bad lifter in a 6.2 hellcat engine. The 6.2 has a higher volume oil pump, and I imagine that the RPM is probably a little higher at idle. I wonder if that increased flow managed to properly feed the lifter the required oil to keep it from going bad?
How about cutting a .010”-.020” groove in the lifter bore from the bottom of the bore to the gallery like we used to do with old solid flat tappet builds? Groove the bores to drop oil onto the wheel/cam interface… I’ve still got a tool to do it by hand…
Maybe Daniel needs to take a set of stock lifter and add an oil grove so the rollers get lubed properly. If that works Daniel. Then you will have people pounding down your door for the improved lifters. 😊❤
Yeah uncle Tony's garage did a peace on this and he poured oil over a lifter at that flatter angle and it didn't oil the roller. Powerful engines. I own one but you think they would over come this problem but they didn't.
In my opinion the next progression is to start calling aftermarket lifter companies and ask for a face to face meeting. Well before phone calls I'd patent a either repair or upgrade lifter design then go to the lifter companies to start prototyping new lifter for testing and redesigning and testing and so on. Great breakdown though!!!
Some engineers don't like to follow the crowd, even if what the crowd uses works, they want to put their own "stamp" on it. Sometimes the "stamp" reads : failed! Enjoyed your explanation.
This would be a very easy test to prove out.Take a fully assembled motor, remove the intake and valve cover and pump oil thru the motor via oil filter adapter. Should be able to see exactly what is going on.
I've owned Hemi's since 2003. I no longer let them idle. Idling kills them. That and I use a liter of diesel grade oil at each oil change. I think, my personal opinion, what helps is having some EP ingredients in the oil. But yes, I agree, lack of oil splash/oil starvation is the root of the problem. Also, they eat pushrods, probably due to the startup items you mentioned.
I have over 300,000 miles on Gen 3 Hemis with zero issues. I use conventional Lucas heavy duty oil stabilizer to aid in the lifter dry start issue. I am on my third hemi. The other two were brand new, this one was used. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me. The previous owner Idled the engine about 15% of the total run time.
I sure hope someone makes a better aftermarket lifter an thanks for the info on the oiling system that is a bad design compared to others that should be getting oil before the top for sure an I'm definitely interested n seeing more hemi content
The vast majority of lifter/cam failures are in vehicles that have a lot of idling time. Police cars and fleet trucks are the usual vehicles that fail.
My 2013 Hemi ate the cam and 4 lifters at 65,000 miles. It also had 7 bent valves. Don't know what bent the valves, there were no witness marks on any pistons. I like how it runs, when it runs.
@@eriklarson9137 an engine is a simple machine. I don't need to see the vehicle, it's irrelevant. There are only a few most common scenarios for those symptoms.
I would bet a pepperoni pizza & a cold bottle of beer that many of the oiling problems stem from the design engineer that was a first year graduate from college with a degree as a mechanical engineer. This was his first big project.
I think Uncle Tonys Garage did a vid on the Hemi cam problem, if I remember right they moved the cam up in the block and is now shrouded from getting enough splash lube. Its a good vid.
I’ve only done a couple with a locked up roller and a lobe gone on the cam and never really had a chance to look how it works. Makes more sense now. But the ones I did do I soaked the lifters and put the pushrods in oil and cranked the engine over till oil was coming up to the rockers because it all looked funky to me and I wasn’t taking any chances. But I can tear down a camaro/corvette (LS3) to do a cam swap in about 5 hours and the first 5.7 hemi I did in 2.5hours. I was like damn I wish we did more of these.
How about trying the Comp Cams link bar style lifter (P/N 15820-16)? They supposedly oil through the side of the lifter body. Would be interested in hearing what you think of them as an option to improve the gen 3 hemi valvetrain oiling.
Finally someone talks about the big stupid oil galley they cast into the center of the block that starves the cam of splash oil. I’ve contemplated an EDM hole in the bottom of the lifter body to spray oil directly on the roller.
I had a 2012 Challenger R/T with the 5.7L and Tremec 6 speed. 40k miles - Hemi tick started to become audible... dealers wanted nothing to do with it. Sold the car 6 months later. Such a shame.
29 years as a Mopar dealer Technician here and I have to say you're not correct as to how the MDS lifter is activated. Oil presser to the lifter bore activates the MDS lifters and pushes the buttons in on the sides of the lifter, deactivating the lifter. The opposite of the LS. The problem with the Hemi is three fold. First is low quality roller bearings material used by the lifter supplier. The needles will just flake apart till they are gone. Then beat the cam to death. Chrysler came out with an updated lifter because of this with larger needles. Second is with long idling of the engine and the MDS system not being activated feeding oil to the side of the lifters and cooling the roller on the lifter with excess oil . The non MDS engines do feed oil to side of the lifters all the time and still have lifter failures but far less than the MDS equipped engines. Third is the MDS lifter it self. The lifter when the MDS is activated relies on a light spring inside the lifter to keep the rest of it's valve trains lash tight. But when this spring starts weakening it can't keep the roller on the lifter in constant contact with the cam. So the roller is bouncing on the cam beating it's self to death. As far as oil splash Chrysler says the that oil splash or lack of splash has no effect on the cam and lifter life. As there is more than adequate lubrication under normal driving condition. So is idling for hours normal? Chrysler says no.( I'm not saying I totally agree with Chrysler on that statement.) Personally I think more oil would be better. I have had Hemi's in my bay with 300k miles and never been apart. They always changed the oil on time. And most of them have their foot in it all the time. And I have some that idle for hours at a time and never see very many highway miles and they are the ones that are most likely to have problems... Keep up the videos! I enjoy them.
Thanks for your VERY helpful reply. I really appreciate it! I have a 2016 Dodge Durango R/T with 67k miles on the the 5.7 liter non-MDS engine. Oil and filter changes every 5k to 7k miles with Shell Rotella 5W-20 full synthetic oil and Mobil 1 oil filters. Unfortunately, it has developed lifter noise. Given your above reply, and that my engine is non-MDS, it sounds like the only suspected culprit is the substandard roller bearings in the lifters.
Interesting! I've been wrenching for 50+ years but mostly GM. My brother has a RAM 1500 (I forget what year, pre-2020) with the 5.7L Hemi in it and has a good number of miles on it. I've seen videos of the "tick" and his doesn't do it. He runs it hard too pulling a camping trailer!
I think it's a industry wide lifter issue. My 2008 Ford F350 with a 6.4 liter Diesel did the same thing. One of the lifters rollers seized and started to skate over the cam lobe destroying it.
The only 3rd gen hemi oiling diagram I can find on the Internet shows a separate galley feeding each side of the lifter bores. I don't know if that is correct but why would they send oil down the pushrods if the lifter bores are fed? Maybe I'm missing something as I'm not a Mopar guy.
Nice dissection of the hemi oil system. Would it possible to ream out that hole around the rocker shaft and head a few thousandths to allow mor oil up through there? Or could doing that starve another component? This is all fascinating to me, I love this mechanical stuff. I have a V6 Camaro I commute in, when it starts consuming more than 1qt in 2k miles like it is now, I'd like to get into that engine and make it bit of a powerhouse, as much as a V6 can be reliably anyway.
I wonder if arp can come up with a waisted bolt to allow a little more volume, but... still its kind of hinky. I wonder how much trouble a rigging prelube pump would be on this block. Oiling lifters from the top means zero can go wrong - a broken spring takes out the lifter etc.
The problem is the lifter trays are too loose and the sharp edges next to the roller . The loose tray allows the lifter to turn or tilt and the sharp edge catches the cam causing heat and metal slivers to get in the bearing
Daniel I once was looking at new pickups I stopped at a Dodge dealer I was looking at the new Hemi had just came out I turned the key and started it up and it had a lifter ticking the salesman told me it would quit in a few seconds and that it wasn’t no big deal I got out of the truck and drove off .
The 1958 Poly engines and descendant LAs oiled the rockers through the shafts and had this figured out no problem, then Magnums oiled through the lifter with no problem. I cannot understand why they then "fixed" something that wasn't broken and ruined it. It's let the LS run away with the whole market.
I think oil pressure in the galleys by the lifters release the MDS lifters. I think you can put non mds lifters in, put 6.1 MDS solenoid blockoff plugs in and I think the lifters will get oil through the pushrods and the galleys all the time, not just the pushrods. I wonder how 6.1 lifters are holding up?.....
I have seen the same stupid pushrod pressurised hemi lifters on late models. It seems the multiple displacement system is bleeding the lifters. I have seen it mentioned that early gen3 hemis without mds have conventional lifter oiling from the normal lifter galley. I don't know if this is true
@powellmachineinc3179 not exactly true. Yes, there is SOME lubrication from the pushrod, but the lifters are mainly fed pressurized oil thru the two lifter galleries in the block on both sides of the camshaft. You are mis-informing people, you need to correct the statement that the lifters are ONLY oiled thru the rocker shafts. You are getting yourself & other people all wound-up by spreading disinformation.
That's a bleed off hole for the oil to get more on the cam shaft I think. And the lifters get too pumped up full of oil that they push too hard on the cam and valve stems. Like a chain that is too tight. It breaks the bearing its on. The lifter pushes too hard and kills the rocker and cam and lifters too.
Any thoughts on why this problem, anecdotally speaking, doesn't seem to plague the 6.1's like it does the later 5.7's and 6.4's? Or maybe it's a recency bias or smaller sample size since the 6.1 is old and certainly a lower volume of them were produced compared to 6.4's and 5.7's
UTG, Powell Machine, and a bunch of RU-vid mechanics gloss over the facts that the Hemi "lifter tick" happens in MDS & non-MDS Hemi's alike. The LIFTER "tick" does not seem to occur in pre '09 5.7's. Why is that? I have not heard any complaints about lifter failure in 6.1L's, either, but I don't know if that's a real thing or not, because I don't think there are a lot of the 6.1's out there. Furthermore, 6.1L's specify, EXACTLY, use Mobil1 0w-40 Euro motor oil only, right on the filler cap, so maybe owners are more conscientious about using the correct oil. Furthermore, if there were a basic design issue, why does it only show up intermittently. Why do most Hemi's go 200k miles without any cam/ lifter problems, and some fail in less than 75k miles?
@@budlanctot3060 yep there are a lot of interesting theories and I can only weigh in on my personal experiences. I've done 3 cam swaps all on 6.1's and all of the lifters looked perfect with between 60k miles and 95k miles. Unfortunately a lot of educated guesses and assumptions need to be made with the lifter issues. Maybe it's a symptom of poor care/maintenance where there might not be much wiggle room outside given maintenance intervals. Hard to say but interesting to hear more experienced folks thoughts.
@@budlanctot3060 And if I know anything, it is to ignore what an expert machinist says, and trust people named budlanctot3060. Golly gee, I wonder if you are a mopar fanboi maybe? Yes you are. Thanks for playing, please drive through.
So the post 2009 5.7 and 6.4 in all applications use the same oil pump but the hellcat 6.2 uses a higher pressure/volume oil pump. I’ve looked on the web and can’t find any information on the 6.2 having lifter problems. Could it be that the hellcat oil pump manages to feed enough oil to the lifter? I’m also unsure of the factory hot idle rpm and oil pressure on a 6.2 but my 2020 1500 5.7 sits around 550 RPM at the best and has 31 psi of oil pressure. In my opinion the oil pump doesn’t provide enough psi/flow at that low RPM. I would think that having the idle RPM set to around 750 would probably help the situation. My 5.7 goes from 31 psi to 45 psi just using my foot.
The OEM non-MDS lifters on the 5.7 Hemi do not even have that little hole you are showing on your brand. I just recently repaired my Hemi earlier this month. I replaced the camshaft with a Mopar OEM camshaft and OEM lifters. Only the #5 intake was froze up and chewed up but I replaced all the lifters just in case. I took one each, MDS lifter and non-MDS lifter, apart to compare and see how they function. The non-MDS lifters have absolutely no oil passage inside the body of the lift to lubricate the roller. The roller can only get potential oil from the oil slipping between the lifter and lifter bore, or from oil sling from the crankshaft - that's it. It simply has the hole where the pushrod seats and pressurizes that oil through a check valve, where it pump up the lifter, but can go nowhere from there. The MDS lifter on the other hand, from what it appears to me, gets pressured somewhere between the bore and lifter body, where two pins are pushed in from oil entering through two large holes in the body side. Those pins unlock and the assembly glides into the body where a three spring combo compresses to take up lash rather than allowing the pushrod to push on the rocker and valve spring. The spring set inside the lifter has far less compression than the valve spring. Interestingly though, there is a passage in the body on the other side of those springs with a hole about 1/4" or so and oil can run down to the roller from that hole. Why the non-MDS ifters do not have a similar hole and setup is a mystery to me. I have heard people say that the failure has occurred on both MDS and non-MDS lifters, but I cannot confirm that. Every video or situation I have seen where someone posted the failure, it always seems to be a non-MDS lifter. With the 1/4" hole that oil can travel through to the roller, I'm guessing very few, if any, MDS lifters see failure.
Skylar (Reignited - Cycle and Automotive - youtube channel) had a M6 Challenger in which he was upgrading with a 392 cam swap and some other parts. He found a failure on the cam and a lifter or two. The car had 120K miles on it. So, it affects the M6 cars as well, but not as bad as the MDS-equipped cars/trucks. I want to upgrade my cam in my 6-speed Challenger. It has 83K miles on it now and is 10 years old last month. My latest Blackstone Labs oil analysis found my oil to be absolutely spotless. No debris, no metals, etc. In fact, I change it once per year (Castrol full-synth and Wix filters) but only put about 8000 miles/year on the car. Blackstone said the oil sample still had over 50% of life left in it!! So, I'm expecting to find a pristine cam and lifters but will have a new set on hand...just in case! It might be smart money to just replace them while I have it apart. But, to do that, the heads must come off. I'd rather not do that, if I can avoid it. Definitely have some thinking to do. 🙂
I had a Charger R/T with the 5.7, a Charger Scatpack with the 6.4, and now have another Scatpack with the 6.4. They all ticked, MOST of the time, i did find that if i run in sport mode, which disables the MDS system, i don't have as loud a tick. Odd, but, i hate the MDS. Hemis... if they are not ticking, they are not running.
I've got a 2013 ram that I parked last year because of this exactly. Number 5 cylinder is dead. I would be glad to send you my engine as a guinea pig to try your idea on the lifters with a groove cut. Sucks, it's a great truck otherwise. By the way, it failed at 120k miles. I could bring the truck if that helps, it's not doing anything sitting in the driveway.
You'd think Dodge would be smarter than putting a restrictive obstruction ( bolt ) through an important oil gallery like that..among the other issues that that system has and you've talked about. Have you researched the ticking issue in the '18, and newer, Ford Mustang 5.0? Anything I've found on it point's too the HP fuel pump, however I've replaced mine and it still has it. Albeit just A LITTLE quieter.
