I've called around for pricing on cam grinds and one company also offered to resurface my lifters. So how do I know if I need to have them resurfaced? They look fine to me - very smooth surfaces with no scoring or visible marks of any kind. Is visual smoothness enough or is it not worth the trouble to have them resurfaced unless there are major problems? Thanks -
Michael

(PS anyone know what the hell Woodruff keys are?? In the timing chain removal section of my manual it says to "remove the Woodruff keys from the crankshaft (if fitted)". I couldn't find anything so I hope they aren't fitted to my engine!!)

I think the woodruff key is a key insert instead of having it machined in the crank.

I woudn't resurface them since they are very cheap, even light nismo ones are pretty cheap ( damn i should have gotten some... )

It is important that the lifters are resurfaced when fitting a new / reground cam. the lifter face should have a slight convex curve, so that the lifter spins and is not in the same position all the time. As well as help avoid axcessive wear on the th cam lobes.

benny

If your lifters are in good servicable condition you should be able to place two of them together, with the flat faces touching & you should be able to see that they have a curved surface as one rocks over the other.
From memory, these things are often ground on something like a 36" radius, so the curvature is very subtle. The cam should also be ground with an ever-so-slight taper across its face when viewed from the side. It's way too small to see with the naked eye.

Refacing them is really just cheap insurance as you will kick yourself if you save a few bucks, only to find later that the cam has an excessively short service life as a result of out of spec lifters.
The basic idea is to have the cam contacting the lifter with a center of pressure off to one side of the dead center of the lifters axis. This allows the lifter to rotate as the cam passes underneath, minimising wear on both the cam & the lifter face.

It will usually rotate the pushrod as well which causes the balls & sockets to wear much more evenly by eventually creating a near perfect spherical contact point at each end of the pushrod, which maximises the life of these components.

As already writen, buying new tappets is also an alternative.


When viewed from the side, a woodruff key looks to be about a 1/3rd segment of a flat disc, cut off in a line parallel with a line across the center.
A shaft is machined with a similar shaped hole parallel with the shaft & the key is inserted. This design allows you to tap the foward edge down a little bit to allow you to install a component, like a cam sprocket, or front pulley, on the shaft easily. Of course the rear sticks up a bit, but as the sprocket slides into position, it pushes the rear part down, which raises the front part up untill the top face is parallel with the shaft.

These keys are used when it is necessary to fit a component that must be in exact register with the shaft, like cam sprockets & front pulleys with timing marks on them. The key not only maintains alignment, but can also provide a mechanical link between the two components,thereby providing a positive drive function

Thanks for hte info guys. I'm probably going to go with Isky on my cam grind but I don't know if they resurface lifters or not. Hopefully they do so I won't have to go somewhere else to have it done.

Things are getting exciting. Did my first tear down last night. Only thing left is to pull the pistons and crank. Time to start spending money at the machine shops!

This is a semi-related question. This is the hole I think where I pulled the cam out of my engine. Is that a bearing in there and should I remove/replace it when I do the rebuild? I didn't seen anything about that in the manual. Are there more inside?

yes,the grey colo(u)red metal is the cam bearing.there are bearings in every rib the cam goes through.you could probably tap them out with a drift,but replacing them is a different matter.of all the cam changes i've ever done,i've only replaced bearings twice,only because they were competition engines, & both times i had to go back to the machine shop to have the bearings honed to size.pissed me off no end.the bearings also decrease in diameter from front to back,so it's vital you get the right bearing in the right holes.my advice,is if they look good,don't worry about them.

As has been said, yes that is a bearing. If it, & all it's bretheren are undamaged, & if you are merely doing a major overhaul, then leave them in, however, if you are doing a total recondition job, including a rebore, then your machine shop will give you the good oil. DO NOT attempt to remove or refit these bearings yourself at they require a specialist tool to do it properly. If replacement is warranted, then let the machine shop do it.

When they ARE done properly, they should not require line boring to true up the bores.
If the block is hot tanked in a caustic solution in order to clean it, then these will need to come out as the caustic will ruin the bearing metal anyway.

I'm pretty sure the first step at the machine shop is to dip it in the tank so that may be a problem. I'm already replacing all of the other bearings so I might as well do them too I suppose. Just checked rockauto.com and they're $20 a set so not too bad. Thanks once again for helping a noob. Michael