Soooo......
After months of sitting I'm finally pursuing engine repair of "Black Knight II", my latest restoration car that was nearly ready for paint before it left me stranded 100 miles from home with what I've diagnosed as a collapsed valve lifter. In preparation for that repair I'm finding that the "Lifter Guides", GM part# 24503256 is NLA.... ANYWHERE! In case you haven't noticed, more and more critical parts are becoming unavailable. I wanted to replace the Valve Lifter Guides that with wear can allow the lifters to rotate in the bore of the plastic guide and destroy the cam by "wiping" the lobe. Summit Racing supposedly had them available by Special Order, but it's been two months since I ordered. I got an update from them about a week ago saying it should have shipped yesterday but I haven't received a "Shipped" notification. I have my doubts that it's going to happen. I don't know what engine rebuilders are doing, ZZPerformance said they were thinking about making them, but nothing yet. This is a $12 part, but when it wears out the engine is done and so is the car. More and more parts dropping out of the RockAuto catalog too as GM and ACDelco stop making them. Without these parts I'm afraid the future of our aging Monte's looks bleak.
Please let me know if anyone has a lead on where to get these lifter guides:

Amazon

Amazon

Also does anyone have a recommendation on 3800 lifters? GM's are $40 each, while ZZPerformance lifters are $110/ dozen.

 

The big upside for us is our lifters really aren't any different than the LS stuff. In fact the long running "ls7" lifter is the PN GM substituted the 3800 lifter for when it was discontinued. So that means LS link bar lifters are a viable option to ditch the trays altogether. Australian 3800s have been doing them for years (granted they're not a 100% drop in, but its not major custom fab either). Recently some folks have been working with Johnson to get drop in 3800 link bar lifters off the ground - thats expected to be ready by mid year last I heard.

With that said, I've not personally had an issue just using low mileage used stock trays, but Im sure those will start getting scare since new is dried up. Ive not seen any local members with failed stock trays yet using low mile used stock.

As for lifter options, the GM "LS7" lifter (or what GM would sell you as a 3800 replacement lifter today) has been the go to for a long long time now. It's what I've got in my build. They're good up to 7k and have factory reliability.

With that said, they've got a really bad name lately. A large volume of counterfeits surfaced with much poorer quality, so the purchase source is critical. Ive also heard things on the various LS boards that post covid quality has been hit or miss even with the real ones, but I dont personally know anyone that has bought them since covid.

Plenty of folks have run the ZZP rebranded lifters without issue too. But it does depend on your build - if you're really high lift / shooting for North of 7k there are other options to consider.

 

Absolutely worth a look with the valve covers off. Could also check some other stuff while the borescope is out through the spark plug holes too. Is compression low across the board or is it specific cylinders?

I think it may be an issue with the site you're using. If you went to a dealer today for a new set of lifters, they'd give you the exact same PN lifter as has always come in the LS7. They've standardized on that PN for many engines at this point.

Not sure about the LT stuff personally.

That's debatable on a stock engine. Per GM, no. If you dropped your car off at the dealer for new lifters, they'd drop them in and send you on your way with stock length rods. On an all stock engine, thats fine as its within the hydraulic lifter range of operation. Certainly lots and lots of people have run them with stock rods.

But it has been shown that the original 3800 pushrod cup sits about .050" deeper than the "LS7" lifter. So its not uncommon for people doing other valvetrain mods to move to 7.00" rods (vs 7.05"s) to account for that difference.

Sorry, I must've mistyped something, I didn't intend to say that. AFAIK the only options today are stock 3800 trays or doing the modifications for aftermarket link bars.

 

My apologies plumbob - I accidentally edited your post thinking I'd clicked quote to reply to it myself.

I just recently started doing the moderator thing and am not used to the controls yet.

I'll leave the post as is as Im not sure how to recover your original content, so I don't want to make it worse. Again, very sorry for the mistake! Ill be more careful what I'm clicking on in the future.

 

It's been 2 days...

All good, lots of new buttons to worry about

 

LOL...No worries bumpin, as I mentioned previously...."I'm in no hurry" and I highly respect all your input. Congratulations on the Moderator job, I'm sure that's quite a challenge for anyone especially starting out.
And thanks to you too Chibi for all your years of service.
Anyway, thank you so much for the info., I wasn't sure if there would be enough difference to require pushrod changes. And coming from a trusted source I now trust that the LS lifters will work. I've been sourcing parts mainly from RockAuto, but they of course have no option to select LS lifters if chosen for 00' SS compatibility. I bought a single Melling lifter to have on hand if I get lucky enough to find that only one is bad, but since then I've read horror stories of the retaining clip popping off, causing a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the valve train, so I'm not so sure about that brand. If you could share a link with your recommendation I'd highly appreciate it. Black Knight II is an all stock '00 SS w 3800 II with 132K miles that I bought as a fixer for I think $600.
I think these are the Link-Bar lifters you're referring to: https://www.269motorsports.com/valve...or-ls-engines/
Kinda' spendy for my stock needs, assuming I would need to replace all twelve (the 16 sixteen lifter kit is cheaper than six pairs): https://www.269motorsports.com/valve...educed-travel/

 

Spoke with Joe at Johnson Lifters about compatibility. For stock, Joe recommends their model 2112SBR-V6 tie-bar set: https://johnsonlifters.com/Products/...53-description
pic: https://fullthrottlespeed.com/produc...c-race-lifters
I appreciated that Joe took the time to call me even though I had emailed them. He walked me through the modification and adjustment process. Lots of new terminology here, ie...base circle, rocker cup, zero lash and preload. Initially a bit of a challenge to wrap my head around all at once, but I think I got it. All twelve lifters would need to be replaced and stock pushrods may need to be replaced with shorter ones to compensate for differences between stock and theirs, I'll need to measure with pushrod length checker and caliper to be sure.
I'll try to get some pics of the project when things warm up in a month or so.

 

TBH I haven't bought lifters in a long time, so I'm probably not a great source for info (I did the LS7s last time I had the heads off for a MLS gasket issue, so its probably been close to 10 years at this point). If youre after the GM / LS7 ones - Id trust any place that you know sells true GM parts. Id definitely avoid places like random sellers on Amazon, and Id even be careful with speed shop type places - especially smaller shops you've never heard of.

Otherwise those ZZP ones are probably fine too. The worrisome thing is you come across bad reviews here and there of one off failures on all of these - especially post covid, so I think any way you go theres a tiny chance of failure out of the gate. The one big benefit you have is you're not trying to build a big cam race engine like most looking to do lifters seem to be. As long as you get a good set out of the box, they should last you the life of the car as you're not going to be revving them to the moon.

That's definitely the style - I'm just not sure exactly which brand/model they used (nor am I sure it even matters - the link bar height may be the same across all brands on their LS lifters for all I know). Ive seen it on the Australian 3800 FB page, but with the FB outage today I'm still having a hard time logging back in. I was hoping to at least post a few pics for you of the clearancing work they had to do on the block to make them fit. IIRC it was something about the lifter 'bucket' cast into the block coming up higher on the 3800 than the LS - but thats going off memory.

But for sure the ones they were working on in the US for the true 3800 drop ins were Johnson. The only thing that worries me there is I'm not sure what kind of lifter they're going to base it around (a more stock replacement style lifter with a generous window of adaptability or one of these real tight tolerance race lifters that's ultra picky). Just makes me think of the comp OE-R lifters that used to be sold for 3800s that had a sub .010" total range, so people were having to buy adjustable rockers on top of pushrods to keep them happy - just an awful lot of work for not much benefit to the average 3800 user.

 

Nice! Thats some good customer service!

 

Johnson makes two versions to fit 3800s, the milder 2112SBR-V6 (reduced travel) and the ST2112SBR-V6 (short travel) race version. Both are 0.30" taller and have shorter travel than stock, hence the need for pushrod/rocker mods. I wonder if the 0.30" taller height has something to do with the head mods you refer to, especially if they were milled? Like you said, the race (short travel) version is "picky" with only 0.010" total range compared to 0.093" for the reduced travel with a preload of 0.035" +/- 0.10".
Their LS version (2116LSR) has the same specs as 2112SBR-V6 but is sold is a set of 16 instead of 12, so I think the only difference is 12 pack (V6) vs. 16 pack (V8).
Considering the mods and cost, I'll likely go with GM LS lifter(s) from a trusted source as you recommend. I'm hoping for the best, and that trays and cam are okay.
****bumpin'.... your expertise and guidance are highly appreciated. The time you've spent explaining in detail is invaluable! I feel like I'm nearing the crossroad where choices and decisions meet, now I just need to expose the facts before moving forward in the right direction to reach a desirable end point.

And Zippy...if you're reading this, this is what can happen after doing 120 mph down the interstate for 5 minutes, shutting down for 5 minutes then restarting. Perhaps friction, heat, expansion and contraction may have played a role here? Only I didn't get caught, just broke...LOL Glad to hear your charges got reduced...very smart.