Brief Description: 02 - Tappets and hydraulic lifters
Tappets and hydraulic lifters
Today was a nightmare. I was doing a routine check of a Lycoming Service Instruction about the rockers and discovered that two of my 12 hydraulic lifters weren't sprining back. After many hours trying to work out how to get them out, I used compressed air to pop the plungers out and saw rust underneath. Later, I realised that these were assembled dry (without oil) to measure the pushrod lengths to get the required 28-80 thou valve clearance, but because I never expected to be taking another 10 years to finish the build, I never oiled them ... dang it. Now I'm going to have to check and potentially replace all of the hydraulic lifters, but I suspect I'll be able to polish the insides of the tappet bodies with Scotchbrite and save them (hope so, cos the only way to replace those is to split the case).
