hydraulic valve lifter tool?

After losing a head gasket on my 1988 2.6L I came to this forum, which has been relatively helpful. But I cannot find any mention of Mitsubishi special tool MB 998443, some clips which the Haynes manual says you need to keep the hydraulic lifters in the rocker arms when you remove them.

This is a special order $65 set of clips which I will hopefully never need again. Are they necessary?

The original head was replaced after another overheat a few years ago, probably with one of the repro heads. It is flat within 0.004", but not 0.002 as specified in the Haynes manual. Would anyone just run it, or is another replacement head needed?

Looking at replacement heads. the reasonably priced ones seem to be made by ITS somewhere in Asia, using "OEM materials", whatever that means. Most reports are that they are OK, but with assembled heads you just never know, so I am hoping I can just switch over the valve train to a new bare head. Of course this means checking all the valves, guides, and seals, and probably more than a few $ in machine work.

Thoughts?

You're going to find literally nobody uses the HLA retaining clips. They don't normally fall out by themselves and every man and his mighty max (or woman in order to keep the SJW's at bay) would've removed the rocker rails and cam caps without them at some point. If you are concerned that the HLA's could fall out, buy a pair of rubber gloves and cut the fingertips off them, then stretch the glove fingers over the ends of the rocker arms. The general consensus with any assembled head is - go over it and check everything. Valve play, leak down test, deck face - anything that would cause a compression leak or any other kind of leak. I've heard enough stories of the V8 guys buying performance heads only to have valve float and compression leak problems straight out of the box without checking them over. If your recon'd head hasn't actually 'failed' I would use it, but I would never mill a warped head to true it up. Just asking for trouble IMO. Messes with compression from chamber to chamber, could load up the cam bearing faces from the cam bed no longer being true (and cause them to wear out or seize the cam *this causes cam breakages as seen in the 2.4 engines). A pro shop will put the head through an oven, get it up to temp and put it through a press first, then skim the face.

Geezer,

Thanks for the help, 's what I thought. No mention of tool usually means you don't really need it. Ditto on checking heads - I have had bad luck with skimmed heads, even when run through an oven by a knowledgeable shop - one came back 0.050 out of true.

one of the old workarounds is to use Vaseline to keep the lifters in place, clean them up real good while you have them out...diesel fuel...

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Originally Posted by poky149

Geezer,

Thanks for the help, 's what I thought. No mention of tool usually means you don't really need it. Ditto on checking heads - I have had bad luck with skimmed heads, even when run through an oven by a knowledgeable shop - one came back 0.050 out of true.

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This isn't a good sign when a shop sends out a recon'd head that is that far out of spec. But when it's the only one around and freight isn't an option...

OK so I got the head back from the shop and assembled it. I went this way because I wanted to know what I was getting. Also I wanted to keep my hydraulic lifter non-jet valve head set up. That is not available as a complete replacement head.

Now only one rocker has any play at all, checking them when lifters are on the back of the cam lobe and the valve is closed. Did the shop remove enough material from the valves and seats so that the lifters are out of adjustment range and hold the valves open, or is this normal?

I hate to put it all back together only to find I have leaking valves because the hydraulic adjusters are out of range.

Did you soak the lifters before you put them in? Either the lifter has collapsed, the rocker arm is bent, or the cam lob is worn.

I cleaned the lifters in diesel as suggested. They are tight when full of diesel so I think they must be OK. I'll follow up after I run the motor, then we'll see if this was the right decision.

^^^
"they are tight when full of diesel so I think they must be OK."
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You should soak the lifters in motor oil before running the motor - diesel will thin out the oil on startup - not what you want to do after a motor repair.