Home made solid lifter update. Im getting ready for an actual chassis dyno tune so I'm going over the whole motor to make sure im getting my money's worth. Step one was check valve clearance since these are experimental lifters that I made at work 3 years and probably 15000ish miles ago. I've been on the 500whp(number is from a desktop dyno program using the last street tune, weight, area, gear ratio, etc) for about 2 years. As far as I can see, the oil port blocking pin is still secure, it has caused no wear in the lifter bore. There is no wear that I can feel on either the puck or in the hla body. It's just shiny in the contact area. Im gonna say the downsides are buying $40 big shim kits to only use a small fraction of the shims and the actual pain that it is correct it off is off. I have to measure valve lash with a feeler gage, write down the clearance, pull the cam, pull the lifter, measure the the total lifter, height, remove the hla from the bucket, measure the shim, find a shim the correct size, reassemble the hla and bucket measure the overall size to confirm, reinstall the cam and double check to make sure everything worked out.

 

I picked m head up from the machine shop. Final verdict is 4 slightly bent valves from unevely cut seats caused by the previous machine shop. They think the pervious shop's pilot may have been bent and the only reason it stayed sealed for so long is the pressure from my beefy valve springs. I re-shimmed all the solid lifter buckets last night, only took 2hrs this time. Gonna assemble the rest of the head tonight. My nephew has been taking auto shop and wanting to learn about cars so he's gonna help me get it back in and running this weekend. If we get done soon enough maybe ill have him hit the buttons on VE Analize live to get it in the ball park before the dyno tune.

 

My truck is definetly cursed, I got the head on, seems like it running great. Im redoing my base tune so i can drive it around until i get in for my new power tune. I found my tps signal is freaking out causing it not to go into closed loop idle or lean out during cruising and will randomly command accel or decel enrichment. I was planning on finding the problem last weekend but when i fired my truck up to pull it in the shop to put the scope on the tps the main voltage dropped from 14.7-12.3 because the alternator stopped charging. I was so sick of the garbage CS130s that keep breaking(this one makes the 4th time the alternator has failed since August 2025). The FD RX-7 has the same mountings as the original kia one but is 100amps. I picked one up from autozone and it was dead right out of the box. I ended up swapping back to the original Kia alternater that was original to my 1999 engine. How the hell does a 27 year old kia alternator from pick-n-pull still work fine but I cant get a new one to last more than 30 days. I'm back on the road for now, I just can't run the A/C til the 200 amp new one gets here from powerbastards.

I dont know how i can have so many issues with new parts that are absolutely garbage.

thanks for coming to my rant.

 

Rotating electrical parts are always just terrible quality. BTDT, you have all my sympathy because it's very frustrating.