Lifters

"Spintron"

About the Spintron | Lifter Testing Results

In the last few years the quality of the lifters in the VW industry has been a serious issue with engine builders. In the mid 1990s a plague struck the Type I specialists and was pure death for literally hundreds of engines before the issues were mostly resolved. This is still going on today, and is starting to increase again with the Type I, but is seriously impacting the Type 4 currently.

A RAT EXCLUSIVE - SPINTRON LIFTER TESTING

Last year a bad batch of lifters from a major supplier cost us several engines, and several thousands of dollars in repairs as lifters were dying on the dyno at scary rates in engines that were otherwise perfect . Our extensive dyno tuning was finding the issues before the engines left the shop and luckily only two engines made it out our doors to have failures later on after installation. Some other builders were not as lucky and lost over 20 engines due to lifters that had varying degrees of quality control issues.

We all tried different lifters, different break in procedures, different oils and finally it basically got to a point where building an engine was more of a liability for us than a profit! Being the innovative hard chargers that we are, Brent and I decided to do something about it and we put our heads together and created the fixture that you see here. This fixture is without a doubt the most real time "proving ground" for any cam, or set of lifters. It is Type IV powered, and shares oil between the test fixture that houses the test cam and lifters and the slave engine that resides above it. This enables real time encounters with hydrocarbons from combustion, slight metallic contamination, and real time oil pressure at the same rate it would be in one of our engines.

A "Spintron" is nothing new to the performance industry, many higher end race shops use them to test many things including complete valve trains, but in the VW/ Porsche industry we only know of one other company that has created one. This company used electric power and a huge motor to drive the spintron, but it lacked some of the real time features that we wanted to challenge the cam and lifters with. Their system had a very poor method of creating normal operating temperatures, and that is super important to the equation if you desire real time results. I'd rather have a fuel bill as an electric bill, and we don't build electric motors- but we do build Type IV engines and have a never ending supply of used parts for the fixture as well as the slave engine

I created our fixture to be Type IV powered (instead of electric) for several reasons:

1- Because we had tons of spare parts and could build the fixture with just our time and a few bits of innovation.

2- Because we wanted real time results and were not afraid of the extra work that it required to create the fixture to be gasoline powered- The results have been and will be worth it to the entire industry.

3- An electric motor with enough power to drive the fixture with the loads and RPM we wanted to run would have cost 3 times what it cost me to create the Type IV slave engine, and build the entire fixture!

4- First and foremost we wanted real results, and I wanted a method that we could use to break in cams and lifters for engines we are assembling that would allow us the peace of mind that we will not have a failure, as they would be tested in the spintron before being installed in a customers engine, or being sold to a customer to build his own engine. For the last 8 months we have been forced to spend 450.00 for a set of 100% ceramic lifters that have ZERO chance of failure (super high quality and a material that is purely resistant to ANY wear) just to be able to continue conducting business with a quality product as a result of all our efforts.

Thus far we have identified and singled our 3 manufacturers of incorrectly designed lifters. This is from the designs of the lifter, to the materials. Our goal is to create awareness of these bad lifters, contact the manufacturers of them and make recommendations on what can be done to create a more quality product and then test them all over again. To this point ALL the manufacturers we have contacted have admitted that they do not have ANY method to test their lifters, but they state that "Their lifters have no problems" (yeah right!)

My future plans (near future) is to also build a lower fixture for Type I lifter testing, and provide that market with the data as well, since the problems are still occuring with the Type I engine, and is beginning to increase again like it did in the 90s.

SO......... Through all this testing I also decided to take another step forward and contact a company that one of my friends that runs a NASCAR shop told me about. This company provides them with all their cams and lifters and had the capability to produce a lifter that was already performing in applications 4 times more rugged than any VW / Porsche application, and doing so with as much as 1200 pounds of spring tension for an entire 500 mile race at sub 8,000 RPM.

I contacted the company and found the owner to be super into his development, and willing to cure all our issues with lifters one last time, and even create new cams and lifters with roller characteristics for even our street engines of normal tune! I began working with this company and we have already designed a near bulletproof Type IV lifter that is constructed of Billet steel and micro-polished to a mirror image for a better wear coefficient.

These lifters are still being tested, and we have recognized some wear patterns that need to be dealt with but its is just a matter of a few small changes and a re-test of the lifters to create the most dependable and lightest lifter for the Type IV engine. We will also be testing different processes of micro-polishing and lobe tapers with some of the cams that are currently available to see if we can unlock some extra power and even less wear.

Look for these "Pro-Extreme" lifters in both Type IV and Type I flavors very soon, closely followed by the "Pro-Extreme Roller" as well as the "Pro Extreme Cermet" which is a design that is really going to set the world on fire when its patents are completed. The manufacturers of all these "Pro Extreme" lifters are dedicated to constant R&D in the NASCAR circles so we benefit from their trials and error and the brutal environment of a 750HP+ engine that lives for 500 miles at a time at sub 8,000 RPM. That is literally rocket science in mechanical ingenuity!

Here are the technical specifications for our "Spintron"

Specifications
The drive engine is a DTM equipped 1700 built solely for this purpose. It has 10:1 CR with a little wild Web Cam that we made up just for this and was built from 100% used parts right down to the bearings. The only thing it has in it that is new is a 30mm Schadek pump. I set the CR high to get the most efficiency I could from it and to generate enough heat to really get the oil up to temp even at low RPM.

The drive engine had to get good fuel economy, or we would go broke running it all day everyday testing and breaking in cams. The engine is fed with dual Dellorto 40mm carburetors, I may switch those to a stock EFI system with a modified plenum and set of runners for more stable running around 3000 RPM. I have set the system up with a DTM and a 356 upper pulley as well as a 20% larger lower pulley to keep the heads at around a 225ish degree temp to also help with fuel economy.

The lower engine is the fixture. We used a Vanagon case for it and it was also outfitted with a 30mm pump with our full flow characteristcs.

Crankshaft- good standard original with a stripped down automatic tranny flex plate used only for sealing purposes and to keep end play correct. The crank, modified flex plate and dual drive pulleys were all balanced to keep things running smooth on our dynamic balancer.

Rods-super modified rods in it that basically nothing but a big end, the beam was chopped off and the rod is only used to keep the oil flow from the rods to the camshaft as close to perfect as possible. This was VERY difficult to do, and too over a solid day of grinder time to accomplish. It was a very important piece to the puzzle and something that no other fixture I have seen incorporates.

Pistons- They were flipped around backward in their bores and JB welded into place! We don't need pistons and have no rods to actuate them anyway!

Oil pump- 30mm Schadek, the oil system is absolutely amazing and it amazed me that it works as well as it does, it was a wild try but it works like a charm!

The engine fixture it's self is my old test stand from the days before we had the dynamometer. I stripped it down and made another fixture underneath to hold the test engine firmly. If you look closely you will see that the lower engine and the entire fixture it is attached to is on a full pivot. This allows for fast removal of the test engine for cam and lifter swaps. It also helps to keep the drive belt adjusted better because belt tension is always the same. The belt tension is adjusted with the large turnbuckle.

The fixture also has a full charging system, its own battery, its own fuel tank, and cylinder head temp, oil temp and oil pressure gauges for each engine, it is basically a stationary vehicle/dyno in many ways..

Safety features I have incorporated a magnetic chip detector in one of the Holley filter housings (filter right after the test engine that would normally see chips first) This will pick up magnetic particles and when enough collect on its face it will turn on a 12 volt siren on the fixture. This will alert us when we have a bad set of lifters or a cam failure! The other safety feature is an oil pressure actuated kill switch. Since the engines share oil pressure and volume if the lower engine loses its drive belt the upper engine loses its oil pressure and dies... So we modified an oil pressure switch to shut the drive engine down at 25 PSI oil pressure to save us a lot of work from an oiling failure.

The way it works
The oil pump in the drive engine actually provides oil pressure for the lower fixture as it is plumbed from the full flow pump through a filter and then into the test engines main oil galley... Then the oil from the test engine is pumped through a filter and then to the main oil galley of the drive engine. Since both engines are running @ 1:1 drive the oil is swapped between them and unbelievably they both keep the same oil pressures and even 4 quarts of oil stays in each sump! It works perfectly!

I have 3 sets of heads with different spring tensions to use for different tests. The heads can be swapped in 5 minutes flat! The camshaft can also be broken down in 10 minutes and a cam swapped in 15-30 minutes and ready to go again!

I went to the ends of the earth to make this fixture "Spintron" the best I could and the most real world available. A few other individuals and companies have made fixtures similar to this but none were as detailed as this one. The time it took to do this has been amazing, and now the payoffs are going to be unreal. This fixture is the only way we can actually find out real time compatibilities with cams and lifters.. The other benefit is that I can now run cams and lifters in the break in fixture for a day before we install them into an engine! That's a HUGE plus!

So many people will ask "Why didn't you make it electric" Well, answer is its all aircooled this way, doesn't jack up a power bill, and it swaps oil between an engine that is actually alive over the top of it.. The oil warms up just like in a car and its as close to the real thing as you can get...

Why do something if it isn't damn near perfect??

Welcome to the proving ground folks, this baby is gonna make some enemies for sure- Those who make products that are lesser grade will not like to see our comparative results! let the games begin!

Lifters

About the Spintron | Lifter Testing Results

Stage VI

Testing is finished, results basically the same as Stage V. It seems that after stage II the wear never really progressed, even with added dual valve spring tension! This set our minds in motion and we found a HUGE key to the puzzle when talking to our lifter manufacturer. Now that the 40 hours of testing on these 4 different manufacturers of lifters are finished, the camshaft and lifters are going to our manufacturer to be measured, and studied under a microscope to try and decypher what is causing the wear. The end result will be a bulletproof lifter, that is lightweight and resistant to wear. The Type I engine is next on the list for mega improvements! NEW for 2006: We are working with LN Engineering to determine if there is a solution available in the area of engine oils to protect the cam at break-in.

Stage V

No significant wear to be reported; all wear patterns seem to have stabilized.Results were amazingly close to stage IV, even with stout dual valve springs being shimmed even tighter than the last test!

Stage IV

This stage of testing showed wear levels very close to the wear we measured in stage III, with exception of two lifters whose wear was up significantly.

Round number 5 will be the big test, that's when the big springs get installed. Although to this point we've only used single springs and then shims, these lifters will see pressures commonly run by many people who commonly run duals or even heavier springs.

Stage III

In the 3rd session of testing we increased the spring tension once again for another 5 hour test. This time things REALLY happened! We saw significant differences in wear patterns and saw another lifter go from a positive radius on the face of the lifter, to a negative number in just 5 hours!

The OEM lifters are now both flat, all lifters are showing some definite wear and even our Billet Lifters need to be redone after the testing shows us their weak points..

Look closely at the center of the lifters and you will see the wear we are concerned with. All lifters that give problems begin with this wear pattern, as the surface speed is slowest in the center of the lifter. The slower the surface speed of the lifter the MORE wear is concentrated on the center and the more wear it creates.

This is why we test!

The bottom picture shows our oil filter discs; look at the debris they are collecting.

Stage II

Here are some pictures of the lifters after 15 hours of single spring tension. This is with ZERO break in. Just fire up and idle at 800 RPM.

The billet lifters are pictured in this post and they had maybe one ten thousandth of wear so far. They have lost .0005 in radius in my measurements. I could not get good straight on pictures due to the shininess of the lifter. The pictures show a wear pattern that is not present measurable or visibly with the naked eye. The pattern is made by the camera's flash.. Next we will be running with 3 more tensions of dual springs, ending up right around 350 lbs over the nose tension. Every 5 hours it will come back down again, and we'll take more pictures and measure each lifter and log the differences. Charles and I will make a spreadsheet to show the wear from start to finish and post it when I'm done. Look below for more captions. So far these billet lifters show that the manufacturer knows their stuff, but the dual springs really tell the tale!

Stage I

Well, we are past the "failure point" and so far all lifters are running well and none are going flat!!! That's a great thing because a flat lifter would have really screwed up my results. Stage I was completed with no break in, and only stock valve springs. As we get further into the test we will add 4 different spring tensions and measure the wear after each 10 hour time span, as well as take pics. In the end we will be close to 400 pounds of tension over the nose and that should definitely show us just how everything is wearing and handling extreme loads at various RPM. So far we fired up the spintron and let it idle at 800 RPM, no break in! Then took it to 2200, and ran most of the test there because after that my fuel economy goes down hill quick.

Jake Raby