Hemi lifter issues

[nascar72]

Hey there, have an '08 2500 with the 5.7 hemi for that I bought last year with around 65k miles and been reading alot on lifter/cam failiure threads in here happening on many 4th gens 1500s and I was kinda wondering if the 3rd gens were also prone to these issues? Mine has 75k miles on it right now, is non MSD equipped, and so far, no noise or tick whatsoever. Maybe very slight tick or maybe piston slap when cold, (like my '03) but very smooth and quiet as it reaches normal operating temps. Been using Castrol Edge 5w20 in winter time and 5w30 in summer when towing my 7k lbs 5ft wheel camper with Wix XP filter. I know many people mentionned to not let it idle or warm up for prolonged periods wich I pay close attention to. So, am I ok with the oil/filter brand combo I'm using right now or should I make the jump to the 5w30 Red Line oil right away on my next oil change? That oil seems like a miracle oil when it comes to fixing light roller lifter/cam issues...at least from what I can deduct in some threads I've read. Maybe you can shed some light on this. Thanks.

 

[huntergreen]

Sounds like it’s working for you .

 

[huntergreen]

Btw, there is synthetic oil thread that can answer any oil question you may have.

 

[nascar72]

Thanks. I will take a look into that. And yes it's working for me so far. Just want to make sure I'm on the right track and don't want to be headed thowards lifter/cam failure down the road because this truck has low mileage and is very clean for an '08 and I'd like to keep it for a long time.

 

[Dodge 1500 4X4]

Read the Synthetic oil and oil filter thread it will tell you anything you want to know.

 

[HEMIMANN]

Earlier Gen III Hemis were subject to higher lifter and cam failure rates, as reported by tech's and members.
FCA changed vendors and designs starting with 2017 in attempt to reduce failures.
No data how effective, but incidences seem to have reduced. However - there are still failure reports post-2017. Which leads a number of us to deduce there is also a lubrication problem within the block involving retooling, that they weren't going to do, being the most expensive part of engine production.
So, super lubrication is required.

 

[HemiLonestar]

Hey there, have an '08 2500 with the 5.7 hemi for that I bought last year with around 65k miles and been reading alot on lifter/cam failiure threads in here happening on many 4th gens 1500s and I was kinda wondering if the 3rd gens were also prone to these issues? Mine has 75k miles on it right now, is non MSD equipped, and so far, no noise or tick whatsoever. Maybe very slight tick or maybe piston slap when cold, (like my '03) but very smooth and quiet as it reaches normal operating temps. Been using Castrol Edge 5w20 in winter time and 5w30 in summer when towing my 7k lbs 5ft wheel camper with Wix XP filter. I know many people mentionned to not let it idle or warm up for prolonged periods wich I pay close attention to. So, am I ok with the oil/filter brand combo I'm using right now or should I make the jump to the 5w30 Red Line oil right away on my next oil change? That oil seems like a miracle oil when it comes to fixing light roller lifter/cam issues...at least from what I can deduct in some threads I've read. Maybe you can shed some light on this. Thanks.

Earlier Gen III Hemis were subject to higher lifter and cam failure rates, as reported by tech's and members.
FCA changed vendors and designs starting with 2017 in attempt to reduce failures.
No data how effective, but incidences seem to have reduced. However - there are still failure reports post-2017. Which leads a number of us to deduce there is also a lubrication problem within the block involving retooling, that they weren't going to do, being the most expensive part of engine production.
So, super lubrication is required.

Ok, seeing some bad/misunderstood info here. Gotta love internet reading......
"Earlier Gen III Hemis" would refer to 2003 to 2008, which did not have these failures. Roundabout 2011 to 2014 or so is the run of the bad batch of lifters happened, which by the way has absolutely NOTHING to do with MDS (it's MDS, Multi Displacement System, not MSD, Marine Sanitation Device or Multiple Spark Discharge). This affected eagle 5.7's and 6.4's across all platforms. The early pre-VVT engines (02-08 pre-eagle 5.7) had a small run of random valvespring and/or valve seat failures. The seat drops were generally after the engine got cooked, the springs were an 03-early 04 problem. It seems like more of a widespread problem than it really is because 1) you NEVER hear about the engines that go all kinds of miles without failure, you only hear when there are failures and 2) I have almost 170k miles on my original 2003 heads. I've had plans to cam it for years and now put a bigger engine in but I'm honestly waiting to see how far she goes lol. Also had a 2006 5.7 at over 180k on its original heads, still have a 2005 on its original heads at 140k and my 2012 6.4 just hit 102k.

@nascar72 since you have a non-MDS 5.7, I'd go with 5W-30 all the time. 5W-30 was the prescribed oil for 2003-2004 5.7's. Only reason they switched it to 5W-20 in 2005 is because that is when the LX platform came out with the MDS 5.7 in it that supposedly needed that specific weight oil (MDS 6.4/392's use 0W-40, so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and they didn't want the dealer's shops having to have two different weight oils on hand for the 5.7.
Absolutely nothing wrong with letting it get up to temp. Military standard for large piston engines is 140°F before putting a load to it. 120°F is plenty. The trick here is to run it long enough for it to get hot enough to burn off any condensation in the oil. Short trips without some kind of highway speed run is bad for these things. Engine sludge due to condensation build up in the oil is one of the major killers of the 4.7 and I've seen more than a few 5.7's suffer from it.

 

[HEMIMANN]

Ok, seeing some bad/misunderstood info here. Gotta love internet reading......
"Earlier Gen III Hemis" would refer to 2003 to 2008, which did not have these failures. Roundabout 2011 to 2014 or so is the run of the bad batch of lifters happened, which by the way has absolutely NOTHING to do with MDS (it's MDS, Multi Displacement System, not MSD, Marine Sanitation Device or Multiple Spark Discharge). This affected eagle 5.7's and 6.4's across all platforms. The early pre-VVT engines (02-08 pre-eagle 5.7) had a small run of random valvespring and/or valve seat failures. The seat drops were generally after the engine got cooked, the springs were an 03-early 04 problem. It seems like more of a widespread problem than it really is because 1) you NEVER hear about the engines that go all kinds of miles without failure, you only hear when there are failures and 2) I have almost 170k miles on my original 2003 heads. I've had plans to cam it for years and now put a bigger engine in but I'm honestly waiting to see how far she goes lol. Also had a 2006 5.7 at over 180k on its original heads, still have a 2005 on its original heads at 140k and my 2012 6.4 just hit 102k.

@nascar72 since you have a non-MDS 5.7, I'd go with 5W-30 all the time. 5W-30 was the prescribed oil for 2003-2004 5.7's. Only reason they switched it to 5W-20 in 2005 is because that is when the LX platform came out with the MDS 5.7 in it that supposedly needed that specific weight oil (MDS 6.4/392's use 0W-40, so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and they didn't want the dealer's shops having to have two different weight oils on hand for the 5.7.
Absolutely nothing wrong with letting it get up to temp. Military standard for large piston engines is 140°F before putting a load to it. 120°F is plenty. The trick here is to run it long enough for it to get hot enough to burn off any condensation in the oil. Short trips without some kind of highway speed run is bad for these things. Engine sludge due to condensation build up in the oil is one of the major killers of the 4.7 and I've seen more than a few 5.7's suffer from it.

Partial facts - the failure rate of the Hemi Gen III far exceeds industry design targets. I wrote an article about this from an insider's view, now retired from the industry. We are not discussing anyone's personal experience - we are discussing the probability of failure, and means to mitigate it. I'm not going to argue further with those that hijack a discussion to take it elsewhere.

 

[huntergreen]

Thanks. I will take a look into that. And yes it's working for me so far. Just want to make sure I'm on the right track and don't want to be headed thowards lifter/cam failure down the road because this truck has low mileage and is very clean for an '08 and I'd like to keep it for a long time.

Btw, I would use 5-30 year round or whatever the manual/ oil cap states.

 

[huntergreen]

Partial facts - the failure rate of the Hemi Gen III far exceeds industry design targets. I wrote an article about this from an insider's view, now retired from the industry. We are not discussing anyone's personal experience - we are discussing the probability of failure, and means to mitigate it. I'm not going to argue further with those that hijack a discussion to take it elsewhere.

Was it the cam lifter issue on gen 3 2500s also ? Thanks

 

[HEMIMANN]

Was it the cam lifter issue on gen 3 2500s also ? Thanks

Makes no diff - it's the Hemi Gen III design architecture.

 

[HemiLonestar]

Was it the cam lifter issue on gen 3 2500s also ? Thanks

No, not as a widespread design or vendor problem. Probably plenty of self inflicted casualties though.

Makes no diff - it's the Hemi Gen III design architecture.

Next you'll tell me it's because of MDS lol.

 

[huntergreen]

Makes no diff - it's the Hemi Gen III design architecture.

Thanks hemimann

 

[nascar72]

Btw, I would use 5-30 year round or whatever the manual/ oil cap states.

Well for this 2008 2500, it's mentionned 5w20 on the oil filler cap. The owner's manual also mentions the use of 5w20 grade oil for all operating temperatures. However, for 2500/3500 trucks with the 5.7L operating under a GCWR of 14k lbs or greater, then the use of 5w30 is recommended.

 

[nascar72]

Ok, seeing some bad/misunderstood info here. Gotta love internet reading......
"Earlier Gen III Hemis" would refer to 2003 to 2008, which did not have these failures. Roundabout 2011 to 2014 or so is the run of the bad batch of lifters happened, which by the way has absolutely NOTHING to do with MDS (it's MDS, Multi Displacement System, not MSD, Marine Sanitation Device or Multiple Spark Discharge). This affected eagle 5.7's and 6.4's across all platforms. The early pre-VVT engines (02-08 pre-eagle 5.7) had a small run of random valvespring and/or valve seat failures. The seat drops were generally after the engine got cooked, the springs were an 03-early 04 problem. It seems like more of a widespread problem than it really is because 1) you NEVER hear about the engines that go all kinds of miles without failure, you only hear when there are failures and 2) I have almost 170k miles on my original 2003 heads. I've had plans to cam it for years and now put a bigger engine in but I'm honestly waiting to see how far she goes lol. Also had a 2006 5.7 at over 180k on its original heads, still have a 2005 on its original heads at 140k and my 2012 6.4 just hit 102k.

@nascar72 since you have a non-MDS 5.7, I'd go with 5W-30 all the time. 5W-30 was the prescribed oil for 2003-2004 5.7's. Only reason they switched it to 5W-20 in 2005 is because that is when the LX platform came out with the MDS 5.7 in it that supposedly needed that specific weight oil (MDS 6.4/392's use 0W-40, so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and they didn't want the dealer's shops having to have two different weight oils on hand for the 5.7.
Absolutely nothing wrong with letting it get up to temp. Military standard for large piston engines is 140°F before putting a load to it. 120°F is plenty. The trick here is to run it long enough for it to get hot enough to burn off any condensation in the oil. Short trips without some kind of highway speed run is bad for these things. Engine sludge due to condensation build up in the oil is one of the major killers of the 4.7 and I've seen more than a few 5.7's suffer from it.

That's pretty interesting. I did previously own an '03 1500 with the 5.7 that I actually did run with 5w30 in winter and 10w30 in summer. Bought it at around 100K Mi. and ran it up to 160k before trading it for my actual 2500. And in those 3 years I owned my '03 1500, the only thing I heard about was the famous exhaust manifold bolts snapping over time. All I remember is engine was ticking when cold and noise would dissapear as it warmed up. Never touched nor had any intentions of touching those manifolds as I was satisfied plenty with the way the engine was running. Never paid any attention of the amount of idle or whatsoever. I just started it up and drove it like I normally would any of my previous vehicles. Now that I got my 2500, I went deeper in the threads in here and saw a whole bunch of roller lifter/cam failures in mostly gen 4 1500s the model years varying between '11-'14. But now that you mentionned that the "early gen 3" weren't really targeted, that kinda lifted some weight off my shoulders lol. And you suggested running it with 5w30 year round, I was running it with Castrol Edge. Is there a particular oil brand you would recommend or I'll be just fine with the one I'm using right now or with any other major brand?

 

[HemiLonestar]

Shows what a run of bad lifters can do. I'm trying to find it, guy I know cut open some lifters from each "era" if you will, just to see what the internals looked like. If I remember right the sh!tty run had a roller bearing issue (I could be wrong) different from both its predecessors and successors.
I run Mobil1 5W-30 year round in my 03. Any quality oil in that weight will be fine. I will say that if you generally don't do longer runs on a regular basis to get the oil hot enough, go with a synthetic. Tends to reduce the sludge build up.

 

[nascar72]

Shows what a run of bad lifters can do. I'm trying to find it, guy I know cut open some lifters from each "era" if you will, just to see what the internals looked like. If I remember right the sh!tty run had a roller bearing issue (I could be wrong) different from both its predecessors and successors.
I run Mobil1 5W-30 year round in my 03. Any quality oil in that weight will be fine. I will say that if you generally don't do longer runs on a regular basis to get the oil hot enough, go with a synthetic. Tends to reduce the sludge build up.

Cool! Tanks very much for the advice and I really appreciate the feedbacks and infos. Keep me posted when you get more info about the lifter/era comparison. I'm pretty curious to find out. Oh and one more thing, still about the roller lifters, I saw a vid on Youtube talking about that and explaining the design flaw and mentionned to avoid extensive idling periods and as long as the engine is reving above 1000-1200 rpms or so, the cam's lubrication ports would have enough pressure to "splash" oil on, over or in the rollers that would keep 'em lubricated...well at least, that's what I understood out of it. What would be your thoughts on that?

 

[HemiLonestar]

Depends on what constitutes "extensive idling", as it sounds like a subjective term (different meaning to everyone, just like some idiot saying full bolt ons). 10 min? 30 min? Hour? Only opinion I have on it is that no amount of lubrication in the world is gonna save a lifter that wasn't made right to begin with. It is a shame that it took having to overengineer the Hellcat engine that they finally dug into and seemed to have solved the problem. Those became the standard non-MDS lifter, fully retrofittable back to 2003 (don't fall for the "Hellcat tax" if you ever need to buy some; a non-MDS lifter is only a Hellcat lifter if it's inside a Hellcat engine). The only lifter for these things I'd trust more than the latest p/n OEM are the Johnson lifters (but they are EXPENSIVE).

 

[nascar72]

Depends on what constitutes "extensive idling", as it sounds like a subjective term (different meaning to everyone, just like some idiot saying full bolt ons). 10 min? 30 min? Hour? Only opinion I have on it is that no amount of lubrication in the world is gonna save a lifter that wasn't made right to begin with. It is a shame that it took having to overengineer the Hellcat engine that they finally dug into and seemed to have solved the problem. Those became the standard non-MDS lifter, fully retrofittable back to 2003 (don't fall for the "Hellcat tax" if you ever need to buy some; a non-MDS lifter is only a Hellcat lifter if it's inside a Hellcat engine). The only lifter for these things I'd trust more than the latest p/n OEM are the Johnson lifters (but they are EXPENSIVE).

Allrighty then. Thanks for the feedback! Really appreciate it

 

[HEMIMANN]

No, not as a widespread design or vendor problem. Probably plenty of self inflicted casualties though.


Next you'll tell me it's because of MDS lol.

Dude, you need to read the 4,000 pages in the Synthetic Oil Thread instead of spouting your theories here.