Avoid Engine Failures By Checking Your Lifter Clearances

In our quest to bring you the very best engine tech available, we are very happy to be able to work with engine builder Steve Brule and Westech Performance. Steve is always a great source of information and never afraid to share what he’s learned.

Steve just sent over this video which we thought we share with all of Power & Performance Nation. A customer had brought over an already-built Chevy 383 for dyno testing which almost immediately bent four valves when the engine was first cranked. If you are like us, you might have at first suspected the valves or valve guides, but Brule traced the problem to the lifters and the lifter bores in the block.

It is a really interesting story, and the failure was totally avoidable. This is definitely a situation that we learned from–just a couple steps before assembly could have completely avoided the expensive repairs–and we hope you can benefit from it, too.