So I guess I got hydraulic lifters. My rocker arms are solid and have no adjustment screws. The engine has a good tick to it. It seems like this is something obvious I should have noticed while working on this thing at, but I guess you don't know what you don't know.

I'm having a hard time finding info on the webs about swapping out new lifters. All I have gleaned is that there is a certain exactness necessary.

I do have lifters rockers rocker arms from the old 62 engine that was in here. Any direction or input would be again greatly appreciated.

so you put hydraulic lifters in an aluminum block?

I have zero experience with aluminum slant cases, I do have experience with slant hydraulic lifters
and since slant hydraulic lifters oil from the top
I guess it should work in either an aluminum or iron case.

A couple of questions
1) Did you install a hydraulic cam? The ramps are different on hydraulic vs solid lifter cams.
And the slant hydraulic cam needs to have a full grove on the rear bearing to supply oil full
time to the valve train-lifters. A solid lifter cam will have a single through hole at the rear bearing.

2) Are you using a hydraulic rocker arm shaft ? And is the rocker arm shaft orentated correctly?
I believe it was Reed that put up a post showing the differences,
this post has good info on hydraulic vs solid lifter slant valve train
viewtopic.php?t=46756


3) Are you sure that the oil holes and passages are open and not plugged on all the rockers and all the push rods
and the feed hole through the block and headup to the rocker arm shaft The slant lifters oil from the top down the hole in the center of the push rods
with oil that came through the rockers- shaft up from the rear cam bearing. A mis located rear cam bearing can also block the oil flow.


4) Did you check the lifter pre-load, there is a bunch of preload travel on slant hydraulic lifters, but if you have none or the internal plunger
is bottomed out, the lifter will not function correctly.


5) I am sure it is also possible to have a stuck or defective lifter, is the noise from all the lifters or just one or a couple?

_________________
Doo Ron Ron and the Duke of Earl are friends of mine.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX8Nj8ABEI8

The engine I got from the junkyard had hydraulic lifters on it.

This is an iron block, the aluminum was the original.

I'd say;
1) see dadtruck's #3 & #5 above
2) did You use a newer trans, if not the converter hub will not center in a newer crank w/o a spacer ring.
3) You could switch to the older mech valvetrain, but You need the cam to go with it, '71-'77 preffered.

Thank you both. It was definitely a bad lifter. I replaced that, but after putting it back together, the engine won't start and it sounds like no compression at all. Aye yai yai.

I am posting a new thread on this issue now.
.