This section exists
to help give back to the community by explaining some of the technical
challenges we've faced along with their solutions.
HLA Pressure Regulator and Lifters
HLA Pressure Regulator - the main purpose
of the HLA pressure regulator we fully engineered, developed,
and tested internally was to reduce oil flow to the cylinder
head down to an appropriate level to keep the valvetrain properly
oiled, but not overload the cylinder head drainbacks and stack
up oil in the head. This resulted in far less oil in the catch
can and better oil retention in the oil pan. The deaerated oil
and reduced oil pressure to the lifters also helps them behave
their best and not tick. An example oil pressure trace before
and after the regulator is shown below, as well as on the oil
pump tech data page. The pressure regulator can help a great
deal with oil control and eliminate some short-term oil starvation
during transients.
Lifters - generally lifters are no a problem
as long as they don't tick and there aren't any valve float
or surge issues. If the lifters tick, they need to be fixed
so they don't tick. Ticking lifters totally throw off the cam
profile and will guaranteed cause float and destroy parts. If
there is valve float, the lifters will try to pump up to take
up the slack during valve float. This will cause valves to hang
open and potentially hit each other or pistons, or just burn
up exhaust valves. I've bench tested a 4g63 cylinder head up
to 12,600rpm, showing good valvetrain behavior that whole way
out with a Crane cam grind and our high pressure beehive springs.
Stability was verified with 10,000fps video and everything looked
great. You will not cure a lifter pump-up problem by changing
the lifters, this is treating the symptom rather than the problem.
The 1g lifters have a bigger plunger bore and the 2g/3g/EVO
lifters a smaller plunger bore. I didn't see a difference between
these or even to solid lifters as long as the valvetrain was
in control. If you ever toss a rocker, the valvetrain was already
WAY out of control for a while.
©2011 Kiggly Racing, LLC
