I have confirmed from Studebaker International, Fairborn Studebaker, Studebaker North and the wholesale supply house that the #536649 .005" lifters for the Champion are NLA. Any likely sources I've overlooked?
Every Champion engine I've ever pulled down had severely worn lifter bores and needed oversized lifters. FWIW, I had lunch with a 99-year-old Studebaker dealer employee. He confirmed it was a well-known problem in the 1950s, but the Champion was considered a disposable car in those days, so Studebaker never did an engineering change to prevent the wear.
Wondering what others do, I asked around. One well-known Stude builder said, "Most owners only want to know 'How cheap can you do it?' so I just put the worn lifters back in the worn bores and put a restrictor in the lifter oil supply. That was the CASO fix back in the day."
Because that's not how I want to build engines, I'm looking into having a custom reamer made up to cut the lifter bores oversize and press in bronze bushings. It's a more expensive procedure than most CASOs want to undertake.
I looked into building up the worn lifters with hard chrome and centerless grinding them to the .005" oversize, but that's a relatively expensive operation also.
Any other suggestions?
jack vines
Every Champion engine I've ever pulled down had severely worn lifter bores and needed oversized lifters. FWIW, I had lunch with a 99-year-old Studebaker dealer employee. He confirmed it was a well-known problem in the 1950s, but the Champion was considered a disposable car in those days, so Studebaker never did an engineering change to prevent the wear.
Wondering what others do, I asked around. One well-known Stude builder said, "Most owners only want to know 'How cheap can you do it?' so I just put the worn lifters back in the worn bores and put a restrictor in the lifter oil supply. That was the CASO fix back in the day."
Because that's not how I want to build engines, I'm looking into having a custom reamer made up to cut the lifter bores oversize and press in bronze bushings. It's a more expensive procedure than most CASOs want to undertake.
I looked into building up the worn lifters with hard chrome and centerless grinding them to the .005" oversize, but that's a relatively expensive operation also.
Any other suggestions?
jack vines
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