I have just fitted some S&S Lifters with travel limiters. I use the method S&S suggested

1. Cam on base circle

2. Set 32tpi pushrods at zero lash

3. extended Pushrods 4 turns ( at 3 turns the valve started to lift of the seat)

4. waited 15/20mins to blead of ( Valve still lifted of the seat)

5. shorted pushrod until valve was seated and had slight drag on pushrod rotating with fingers ( this was about 1 full turn of the pushrod).

6. backed of 2 more flats and locked down( S&S say 6 flats but from what some Yankie experts say I went 2 flats)

All seams good, pushrods all rotated with fingers after adjustment and engine turns over by hand with no issues.

 

Anyone that has used the Travel limiters how does this all sound?????

Been a while but from Memory and that isn't real good I had some issues working it out when I put mine in. 4 turns was what I was wanting to end up at given there is near .200' travel available. Lifting the valve off and then backing off the push rod just didn't seem right to me. If they know what the TPI is and know where they want you to end up why not just give the correct number of turns down.

Any way

4 turns as recommended is .125"
TL in my last set were .115" average
I can't remember exactly but .200" is about all the lifter has.
the valve lifts off at 3 turns or just less on 32tpi

if your at valve seat plus 2 flats you are very close to the limit, only about .010", sure the barrels and heads grow with heat but so does the push rods and lifters. You don't have much room to play with. For me the thought of having a safety net for it to colapse to if things all go wrong I liked.

I never could mine to set right and had periodic bleed off and then pump up for no real reason. I dumped the limiters and set it all at .140" and never had an issue again.

Set mine with a dial gauge. No backing off or them such shenanigans

working on a set of premiun S&S lifter's into a 124 & another set for a 145 c.i. , did not like the way they felt in the bore's , mic up the body & both sets  are 0.001 " greater @ 90 deg to the axle pin shaft low on the body , compared to the rest of the body , been clamped too har when pined , + were slight less dia compered to stock lifter's a little bit loser in the case bore's , i have use a few set's of these before but  ?

Fired it up last night, Fark noisy as, rode around for 10min and hasn't quietened down, will go back in and have another go.

Last time I used limited comp 875's, I just went .050 from zero lash.

A lot of you guys have missed the point of the lifter limiter, its not about how much set down you apply to the lifter as in how many turns the push rod is extended from zero lash its about how much clearance you create above the limiter, as in how many flats of push rod you back of before locking, that said, the necessity, reason and benefit of a lifter limiter are as follows. First necessity of a lifter limiter; it enables the lifter to behave as a solid transmitter of cam information to the rest of the valve train components,. The hydraulic unit is a expansion compensation device, as the engine expands and contracts with the change of temperatures the unit has a void that fills at a controlled rate to take up the clearance and also provides a slight pre load to the valve train this is the process that takes up the clearance that creates valve train noise, all this noise is, is the opening up of clearances and closing up of clearances hence the tapping noise. ..The reason the limiter is installed is to protect the hydraulic spring and check valve assembly under the lifter from being crushed in some manufactured types of lifters, it also sets and holds the inner piston to oil supply ring location that is machined in the lifter body or piston so ensuring optimal oil supply to the valve train.
The benefit is this improves the accuracy of the cams information being converted from rotary motion to linear motion as the hydraulic unit has the potential at rpm to bleed of a little and not keep up with the information the cam is sending to the valve train ,the valve would see this as a loss of total lift and a loss or variance of cam timing events that are supposed to occur accurately at the valve.
The backing off of the adjuster from the solid to clearance or free play point being 2 flats or 6 flats is a very important operation as backing off two flats will give the most accurate .interpretation of cam events this improves the accuracy of the cams information being converted from rotary motion to linear motion but can be the noisiest as it can take forever for the micro bubbles of air to bleed from the lifter, it also needs to be monitored regularly to ensure it does not close up and ride the valve ,the six flat back off is the quieter of the two adjustments as this allows the lifter to pulse a little hence purging the micro bubbles of air from the lifter unfortunately this at high rpm can result in a loss of valve train timing accuracy ,albeit less loss than no limiter at all.
Do not confuse this minor valve train noise with the sound or clatter a collapsed or incorrectly adjusted lifter will make.
Not covered in the discussion is the necessity of good quality adjustable push rods ;Perfect fit fixed length push rods presume the engine is at perfect design dimensions and also has the feature of negating fuck ups in misunderstanding installation procedures ,put them in 1,2,3,4 how hard can it be ??? you would be surprised how many instruction sheets are as clean as the day they were printed, still folded and in the plastic wrapper ,,perfect!! And how many tangled valves I have replaced over the years before the engine even got to fire a shot in anger!!! But they will work if there is clearance which will exist in most engines ,over the years there have been engines not live up to their reputation on the dyno and riding fixed length push rods have been discovered as the culprit.
Also the adjustable easy fit push rods are another pretender in a performance environment , yes they set the lifter at the required set down or set down and back off ,these things weigh a ton in a performance environment where strength ,rigidity and light weight are of paramount importance for high rpm {this is an opportunity to repeat something that was said to me many years ago and still hold true today ,that is ,you can have two seemingly identical performance engines both making identical horsepower ,one is doing it hard and beating itself up and the other is doing it easy and around for the long haul!} back to the topic ,,valve trains suffer from a condition called ‘stab pressures’ this is when a cam lobe starts the lift event ,all the components in the valve train are stationary and have to be got moving this is 'stab pressure' and once they are moving they don’t want to stop this is called 'inertia' ,the inertia of the parts at speed can create a condition called lofting ,this has crudely and incorrectly been called valve bounce which incidentally is the correct term for a valve bouncing or vibrating on the valve seat when it closes but it is a term that a lot will relate to ,lofting is what crashes valves into each other at high rpm ,it is always the exhaust valve that is left behind in the chamber when it is supposed to be closing or all parts keeping in contact when the closing cam ramp is active ,the inlet valve has no option but to open as dictated by the opening ramp of the cam as there are no compressible parts in the valve train hence valve to valve crash at a missed gear or, kicking back down through the gears and dragging the engine well past the rev limiter.
Valve springs are a whole new topic ,that’s enough for one day.

Speaking of valve springs and lofting or "floating" as I call it, Something not mentioned is possible lifter "pump up" , which is another reason I wouldn't set a non limited lifter off the bottom.
Interesting with the Comp 875 lifters is they use a limiting device on top of the pushrod cup, and for the reasons mentioned by Hoody, not a good idea setting them
off the bottom due to possibly hurting the spring/check valve and upsetting oil supply.

Cheers Hoody, yes I am fully aware of its how much clearance you set above the limiter. This is the exact point, I hear from a lot of experts that say to wind down the P/rod to you contact the limiter let it bleed down then back it of until you can turn the P/rod with slight drag and lock it down. But your explaination of the 2 flats or 6 flats as I went 2 flats and just can't shut it up and now I think I understand why

cheers

Ok ,first the stock 05up ovate wire spring is used for a number of reasons, excellent technology ,low inertia hence lower install pressures, facilitates simpler stem seal spring seat combination assembly ,they make about 125lb seat pressure and can take about .570” lift ,there are a number of bolt in street performance cams that will work well with no spring change, but and I repeat but as you go up in lift and add duration to a cam the opening and closing ramps become more acute so placing greater demand on the springs to control the valve train at rpm ,,,what is the safe limit for stock springs? I don’t know ,i don't use them ,as I said there are a number of cams that will enhance a stock engine very well that will bolt in ,but there are also a number of performance cams that are quite aggressive that are classed as bolt in and stock spring applicable ,this is the area that I would be reluctant to go into as valve springs make or break an engine and at the end of the day its all about valve control at rpm . Performance cam manufacturers give recommendations for springs and when they say ok for stock springs what they are saying is ,yes, it will bolt in with no clearance issues but they are expecting the springs to be in sound condition as well ,if the stock spring is off by any measure higher rpm issues can occur and you probably would not know its happened . Springs not up to the task can cause a number of issues ,cam lobe wear ,damaged lifters ,pitted valve tips and rocker faces ,push rod tip and rocker bucket damage, hammered valve seats etc these things take time to become evident and when they do the replacement parts are installed and the engine goes back into service with the same springs and is doomed to repeat the same damage over again as this type of damage takes time to manifest itself it gets treated as unfortunate premature wear and tear or the owner describes himself as a lunatic rider who just wears shit out .
SE in their catalog’s spring section give very good information on spring recommendations versus cam grinds that even I think are a little high for some applications but what they are doing is erring on the side of safety at rpm ,I don’t think I have put a head together with less than 180lb seat pressure since I don’t know when!!
Next,Speedys point, pump up is less likely in a v twin with 30 odd pound oil pressure than it is in a performance v8 with 50psi oil pressure , but a lifter will fill a void as quick as space is made by lofting which is the same as float they are both the same condition created by loss of valve control by a cams dynamics exceeding a springs ability to control events .The point made about some performance lifters having heavy duty piston retention devices installed in the top of the lifter are because in an automotive application the top retainer has an active role in the lifters operation,the adjustment procedure for automotive is from zero collapse of the lifter and leave it there, up to 1/8 of a turn down, it is in a different operational environment to what we have so don’t try it ,stick with the motorcycle recommendations .A pumped up lifter would make the engine go ‘off’ or plateau at rpm as valve control is lost .
The observation that a Leineweber cam caused a problem with an engine bears out what we have discussed previously about springs and valve control .Jim Leineweber has made excellent cams for many years ,he probably at one stage had more of his cams in drag bikes than any other manufacturer ,that said ,his cams had a name for having very aggressive ramps and he always recommended his valve springs on installation and yes they were high seat pressure springs for a very good reason ,valve train control ,how many times have I repeated myself now??
Now for Ando and Hillys point about lifter limiter installed push rod adjustment and micro bubbles,
You could set the push rods at 6 flats out and wait till things shut up a bit and then reset down to the 2 flats ,in my own bike I run mine at zero ,that is I wind down till the push rod stays bound on the lifter limiter for a period of time {I know what mine behaves like } then I just back off till it just spins ,just like an iron sporty ,this method does need to be checked regularly for obvious reasons .The micro bubbles I am referring to are air bubbles ,its these bubbles collapsing and expanding that provide the void in the lifter that makes noise .
Back to work…

Just joining in to keep track and learn a bit. The bee hives are made so that the spring rate is not uniform, a uniform spring will have harmonics, its unavoidable. They change the diameter and spring rate to try and get a single spring to handle higher RPM's by avoiding the harmonics, thats my understanding of them. Are the limiters your talking about, the ones that stop the lifter collapsing at high lift and RPM's. Might need to go find the part number, as was going to put them in mine as well. The lifter noise can sometimes be the lifter landing back on the cam if it has a very fast closing rate from the lifter not being able to keep up with the cam profile. All that extra valve train weight from the pushrods and lifters having an effect of needing heavy springs to keep it working properly compared to an overhead cam. It's a lot of weight to accelerate up, stop and accelerate back down again 50 times a second at 6000 RPM.

all good info, thanks for the explanation
Ive just fitted S&S 79cc heads, 640 lift springs [what t hey come with] and 583 cams
I went with Fueling lifters, and quikee pushrods [which now seem overweight]
Its been a bit of a grey area for me, with the setting rods, and with a shorty helmet
the extra noise of the engine leaves me constantly wondering if its set right..
Think it may be safer to actually take it to a shop and get it done properly
just for some peace of mind.. I managed the rest, so saved the main labour component of the bill

To add a bit to the S&S lifter limiter installed lifter adjustment method ,when they say they want the lifter on the base circle of the cam, for the average guy this means very little when he stands in front of his bike with the tool box slightly ajar ready to strike ,,, It is easier to set the engine on top dead center firing ,as this is the time you want both valves shut no matter what lifter is in use ,basically turn your engine forward as the inlet lifter on the cylinder you are working on is falling to the bottom of its travel then turn the engine forward with a plastic probe in the spark plug hole till the piston is felt to be at the top of its stroke ,also both lifters for the cylinder being adjusted will be stationary at this point ,if you can see either lifter of the cylinder you are working on moving at this point you are on the wrong stroke ,,,use a plastic probe ,no screwdrivers ,scribers .or anything rigid ,I have repaired a few plug holes due to someone cocking a tool in there as the engine was pushed over by spring pressure from the opposite cylinder .
As for the turns down from zero lash ,this is not super critical with lifter limiters as all we are chasing is the point the hydraulic unit seats on the limiter ring and holds the valve open ,so tightening the push rod rotation ,then completing the adjustment after a period of time for bleed off to find the point where the push rod just rotates freely then back of to the point you are going to use ,be it 6 flats 2 flats or barely off tight .When you tighten the adjusters use brand name tube nut spanners as this will give the widest flank engagement of the hex’s also they don’t need to be Kenworth stupid tight ,some poor prick might have to undo them in the future, but do recheck the lock nuts after a good ride just for insurance .
The point I made about heavy and light push rods was to do with the horsepower chasers of the forum, the guy who has put in a mild cam and tune would probably enjoy the impact on his invoice by the simplicity of the easy fit push rod with no great detriment to his engines performance.
PS: no aluminum push rods,, might as well cut up a pool cue and put that in.

Maybe I'm wrong but are we trying to make solid lifters out of hydraulic ones. If you need that type of performance maybe just use solid lifters, the stock ones are hydraulic for a reason. One way to keep the micro bubbles out might be to assemble them immersed in oil in an icecream container. Been a while since I touched mine, maybe I'll find out soon.

Not getting much work done either and the list is getting longer...

Your right Captain the list gets longer because a forums participants skill level are not like yours, they range from naive passing interest to professionals and all in between and yes a topic can get mired in debate because the questions thrown up come from all levels, we could brush aside the seemingly unskilled and keep it on topic so to speak,, I understand this to be a general common interest forum, let me know if I am getting boring, I can move on.
We are not making a solid lifter ,we are endeavoring to eliminate an area of function of a hydraulic unit that will not be required in a higher performance application ,that is ,the travel range of the lifter under the adjusted point we have aimed for but retaining the hydraulic compensation feature when the motor expands with heat,. In my first post I explained the benefit of limiter installation ,I also explained about why a limiter is the thickness that it is ,another “that is”,,,’its to align the oil supply galleries’ ,that little gem is the giveaway ,before 1984 all OHV Harley engines had remote supply oil to the top end, post 84 the controlled oil supply route was shifted to the push rods, so what happened was if the pre 84 big twin top end had solids fitted there was no disruption to the oil supply to the springs, rockers and valves{Pans have a different problem in this area }. If we install solids in a post 84 engine we have clearances being introduced into the valve train when the engine expands that are points for oil supply to bleed off, reducing the supply to the valve train ,in a drag race engine this is of little consequence as running time is very short but in a street engine where the primary importance of oil supply to the top end is to keep the springs cool and lubrication occurs secondary ,essentially what you create with solids is effectively a line of Pope sprinklers before the top end is fed.
Let me know how you go assembling lifters immersed in a bucket of oil, which would make it to the top of Utube.
If once lifters are adjusted correctly with a known objective in mind the maintenance required ranges from almost set and forget for mild street applications to checking at regular intervals this would only involve checking that the push rods still are spinning freely as the adjustment procedure was done right first time around, any change in push rod feel,performance or a change in valve train sound would warrant further investigation.
Bear in mind some guys are running engines on the street that actually have more race intent from the parts manufactures than regular touring and so require a closer maintenance regime, if you have been involved with race vehicles you would know there are strip down, rebuild procedures between meetings that are of an inspection nature mostly,,, cheap insurance,,, you don’t want to find out on the track that something cheap when failing found its way to the most expensive parts to wreck!!! Races are set up to win in the workshop.

Last time my bike was apart, there were two of us doing it as my mates place had the most tools. I was moving house so all my tools were not readiliy accessable, he had a lathe in case we needed to make anything and mine was not set up, the only tools I had to bring were the bike lifter and the cam bearing tool. We set out to do it in a weekend but it went slowly. As he is not a Harley owner he got a lot of free laughs of me having to use the die grinder to get the clearances for the new bits in the heads. He rides Jap bikes and I coped a load of how a Harley is an expensive museum piece for two days as I had now become a retarded, dumb, Harley owner. Fitting bits that didn't fit took time. I think Harley just makes clearances bigger so that stuff fits easier. The result of this was he started putting the lower valve train back together so we wouldn't be still at it Sunday midnight. What he did was pull the lifter apart, immerse it in oil in an icream container upside down, push down the insides so the air bubbles could escape, filled and flushed with clean oil by pumping a more few times, reasemble without draining the oil out, didn't take long for each lifter. The only tools I remember him using was needle nosed pliers, engineers tool for picking out seals or circlips, a small screwdriver and a magnet on the end of a extendable tool like a car aerial. I told him to follow the F..ing instructions, thats why they are there, but he has been working on motors all his life and I trusted him as he wanted to do it his way. He's a fully qualifed mechanical engineer from uni, not the diploma job. He said he would have them back in and fully adjusted before starting the motor. As it was 18 months ago I can't remember every thing we did as I was busy with the heads on the other side of the bike or pinching tools back he had swiped when I put them down. But I think at one stage he asked me to turn the motor over by hand to pump some oil through or it might have been to check where the pistons were. I remember him insisting the piston at TDC firing stroke to adjust the push rods and wanted my help to check it or turn the motor over. Some of the theories and technical explanations he can come out with would decimate almost any ideas on how or why you think motors really run, kept us a bit distracted. He makes his own 2 stoke exhaust systems so he can tune his dirt bike motors to how he wants them, all pre planned out with maths before he starts making anything. 

End result. He had the new cam in, all the lifters fitted, bled down and S&S pushrods adjusted, job finished, all done before the motor was started. My lifters which are the standard B motor lifters (which if what is often written on the web is true (lol), are the best ones to have) with a .625 lift cam selected for quick opening and closing, runs as quiet as a stock motor. NO LIFTER NOISE which I was not expecting to achieve as it seems a common problem. I joined in post to keep track about the limited travel hydraulic lifters as S&S sell a limiter which goes on the stock lifters which should do the same job for about 10% of the cost. In the next few months when there is free time will be feeding the Harley addiction by rearranging the motor again so want to know what to look out for when adding the limiters while its apart. He said that years ago they had 20 or 30 lifters to do for car motors, they would stand them all upside down in a pan with the oil high enough to cover them. Heat the pan and the air would expand and bubble out. For a standard car hydraulic lifter this was the quickest, easiest way of doing a lot in one go and he could be doing something else while the air was bleeding out. That was how they stopped lifters making a noise = happy customers.

Keep thinking that each time the motor is started there would have to be air bubbles pumped through the oil system or heavy use would aererate the oil as well, which would start it ticking if it is from trapped air somewhere, but not so far.

 

Not a tick or a tack or a tick ticky tick taack, did it work for anyone else?

Went to have a look on the S&S website to see if they sell solid lifters, but the website was unavailable and I don't have the time to go searching all day. I your talking performance, then if a Harley 120 was to make as much HP per cc as a 600 sports bike from 14 years ago back in 2000 it would be producing 400 HP, all day, every day and thats staight out of the box, unmodified, not struggling to get 120 HP. 750's from the late 80's (25 years ago) made as much or more HP than a 103 (1700cc) Harley does today and thats without the extra Harley weight penalty factored in. When people talk about race gear or performance for Harleys and race use only, race against what, it needs to be kept in perspective.

Anyway jokes aside, back to the the thread topic. Is the cam they are using is designed to run with hydraulic lifters or solid lifters. If it is an S&S cam and they don't sell solids (which I didn't find out), then you would presume that the cam profile was made to run with hydraulic ones and the amount of loss of length or variation in length from using hydraulic lifters would have been factored into the cam profile by the manufacturer already. If your lifters are working properly the gain might not be worth the extra noise of stopping the hydraulic ones working properly. Do you actually gain anything on the dyno by having the minimum possible amount of adjustment as opposed to what the manufacturer says to set them at?

Might borrow a ultra high speed camera one day and film a Harley valve train working, could find out a few surprising things, then you could see whats really going on instead of guessing. Don't know if this website could handle a file that size.

 Didn't follow up on a lead I was given, that if my lifters were cr4p, then to try ones out of a small block Chevy. Not sure if its the twin cam or the models before it but apparently they can be a workable alternative. Mine ran fine, so never followed it up or bought one and put them side by side and see if it would work, was given a part number but its long gone, there was no need to buy a whole box full of lifters. The range of parts available if it did work would be much better and likely much cheaper as well, A set for one motor would do a few Harleys. Could probabley get a set for a V8 for the same price as a set for one Harley from Screamin Chicken.

Back to work again...........

S&S make an insert for there lifters that limit travel. The idea being that still have some hydrolic adjustment at low rpm but become solid as rpm rise. They were not expencive but I did not get them because I wanted to keep it simple as I had not chaged lifters before.

I should of read a few more posts. You guys already talking about them Hahaha

They looked like the best of both worlds to me, keeps the hydraulic self adjusting feature and a limiter to stop them squashing at revs if they get lazy, also a lot cheaper than a new set of lifters. Anyone tried them?