Thursday Evening Update: Magical Mushrooms . . . Psychedelic Man
I've just finished the work on the 'magical mushroom' lifters. We've replaced the stock hydraulic mushroom lifters with some flathead Chrysler mushroom lifters. I got the idea from Barney Navarro about 25 years ago - to put them in flathead Fords . . . but they actually work really nice in the FlatCad. The bigger the lifter base diameter, the faster the cam opening ramp can be (which is good on a flathead - no rocker arms to multiply anything!).
1) The length is just about perfect.
2) The body diameter is smaller than the FlatCad valve lifter blocks, so Buddy had the lifter blocks bronze bushed for me.
3) We have about .0015 clearance
The cam pattern was designed for a 1.260 lifter diameter, so I had to turn the bases of all of them down on the lathe - about .023 reduction in the diameter. As you can imagine, they're harder than hell, but good ole' carbide was able to cut them . . . just took a long time.
We have 20 lifters (4 spares) . . . glad this job is over . . . boring as all hell.
Tomorrow I'll be fitting the lifter blocks, lifter block girdle supports and hopefully finishing the valves by sometime Saturday.
Chris is coming over on Sunday to help with the plumbing - probably while I'm working on the dry-sump mount (which is a real PITA).
Here are the lifters . . .