Hard Steel Upgrade Lifter Guides Fits 03-10 6.0 and 6.4 Ford Powerstroke

Description

Plastic lifter guides were designed to conserve the cost of parts and speed the assembly process. Lifter and camshaft lobe failures have increased substantially with plastic guides compared with engines using steel lifter guides. There is no benefit whatsoever to plastic guides beyond cutting costs.
Plastic lifter guides are injection molded with an interference fit to hold lifters firmly for assembly purposes. This tight fit is supposed to locate a roller lifter so it’s nose wheel is in perfect alignment with the camshaft lobe. However, our measurements have shown that plastic guides are often mis-shaped and do not align lifters properly with the camshaft. It is common to find plastic lifter trays out of plane by .005" in .500" and as bad as .015" in .500".Nearly 2 degrees crooked! 2 degrees is double the entire range of motion steel lifter guides allow and the plastic guides fix the lifter that way for it's life.
A decade of investigating plastic lifter guides, camshaft and lifter failures has shown a solid link between plastic guides and shortened lifter life. More often it is a sudden failure of a single lifter in an engine, not wear across the full set.
KEY POINTS OF OUR RESEARCH
- 6.0 and 6.4 Navistar engines use the same lifters as 6.9 & 7.3 IDI, 6.2 and 6.5 GM diesels, and 7.3 Powerstrokes. These engines, especially the indirect injection IDI and GM diesels have oil soot concentrations that match and even exceed the late Powerstrokes. Many diesel techs believe the oil soot load from extreme EGR circulation is responsible for most lifter failures. Soot load certainly contributes to valvetrain component wear, but actual oil testing shows soot loads are no greater than engines which have used these same lifters for decades with minimal failures. We believe engines exhibiting lifter/camshaft wear related to oil exhibit wear spread across all or many lifters. Not just one lifter/lobe.
-In harsh service engines, such as tow trucks and city buses, especially where one engine has experienced multiple cam and lifter failures in a span of 3 years, these engines had no subsequent failures after our steel guides were installed.
-Frequency of lifter/camshaft failure in pushrod engines using plastic guides correlates with increased lifter mass. Engines with small roller lifters, GM LS for example, have lower failure rates. Chrysler Hemi and 6.0/6.4 Powerstroke have substantially heavier lifters and high failure rates.
-Duramax uses steel roller lifter guides. Interestingly, the Duramax block is designed in such a way that the plastic lifter guides from an LS V8 actually fit. Duramax was likely designed to use plastic guides (plastic guides are a GM technology), but during development the change was made to steel guides. Duramax lifter/camshaft failures are unheard of. Duramax oil also has very high soot load.
-When lifters fail in a 6.0 or 6.4 the needle bearings come out of the roller and are small enough to pass through the screen on the oil pump pickup tube. The needles go through the low pressure oil pump destroying the pump and the front engine cover. When this failure happens the camshaft cannot be changed without removing the crankshaft first. It's a perfect storm, costs a ton of money and downtime.
Your Powerstroke is not bulletproof if it has plastic lifter guides.
Premium tool steel, precision machining and heat treatment provides a cost effective solution to bulletproof your 2003-2010 Powerstroke.
FEATURES & BENEFITS
- Machined from proprietary tool steel
- Heat treated for proper hardness
- Saves labor, installs without removing transmission or rear engine housing
- Decreases engine friction
- Durability for daily driver or high RPM and racing
- Made in USA