Re: benefits of running mechanical lifters

[trnsfrma@ix.netcom.com (Shawn C. Meze)]

At 02:35 AM 6/5/97 -0400, you wrote:
>I am just wondering what the benifits of running mechanical lifters over hydraulice 
>lifters would be. I see a lot of race engines and high cmpression engines being run
>with the mechanical lifters and it just doesn't make sense to me! Is this because 
you 
>can manually adjust them?  How would that help?  


In a nutshell, the hyd lifters adjust themselves. So if there is wear of any kind, 
or the valved have beaten the seats to where it would cause the valve clearance to 
change, the hyd lifters automatically adjust them for you. No removing the valve 
cover, no cranking by hand a few dozen times, no messy and sometimes difficult 
removal of the shims ect. Its all done for you. 

Now, the bad part about the hyd lifters is they are dependant on proper oil 
pressure. Sometimes the oil gets hot and the oil pressure just isnt what it needs to 
be. That in combination with the aging proccess of hyd lifters themselves not 
working properly with a low but within oil pressure specs, you get some really loud, 
rattling lifters at idle and hopefully at higher rpm's it clears up. ( very 
annoying)Start up in my GLi always has some lifter noise for about 15-30 seconds 
when its cold. After that, its quiet. 

A good example of this is Randy Walters Gti. After a race, his car is so loud people 
stand around it waiting for it to blow! He has got over 230,000 miles on the engine 
and as you know, none of them were easy. (Its been a dedicated autox car for about 
the last 6-7 years now so it only gets driven to races, raced hard and driven home 
again.)
  

Hope that about covers it for you? 


Shawn
86' Jetta GLi
82' Scirocco GTi
The Fastest, Quickest, Cleanest and
best looking Scirocco in all of San Diego!
http://www2.netcom.com/~trnsfrma/vws.html
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