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Ea81 hydraulic lifters.


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You dont need to add zinc if you run high ZDDP oil. Amsoil 10w40 premium protection for example, or z-rod, or some of their other products. 

 

Yes they are flat tappet cams and yes the lifters will be damaged without sufficient ZDDP. Had to have a set reground not long ago because of wear. 

 

Oregon Cam Grinders does them - $5 per lifter. 

 

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EA82's do not have a rolling element in contact with the camshaft. It applies to all of them. It also applies to EJ22's except 97+ as well as all EJ quad cam engines up and including current model year. I have seen pitted cams from junk oil on many 2000+ engines. Quality, clean oil is not optional on Subaru engines - at least not for long. 

 

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I'd say any engine over 10 years old needs a high ZDDP oil at this point.  If it's a turbo Subaru engine of any generation, you should be running a HTHS oil as well, such as Motul X-Clean, German Castrol, Amsol or Shell Rotella T6.

 

Basically any oil that meets BMW/Porsche/MB's high performance oil specs would do well in a turbo Subaru.

Edited by carfreak85
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I'd say any engine over 10 years old needs a high ZDDP oil at this point.  If it's a turbo Subaru engine of any generation, you should be running a HTHS oil as well, such as Motul X-Clean, German Castrol, Amsol or Shell Rotella T6.

 

Basically any oil that meets BMW/Porsche/MB's high performance oil specs would do well in a turbo Subaru.

 

Agreed! We run Amsoil's high zinc oils in everything and anything modified or raced gets Dominator. 

 

Catalytic converters may not appreciate it long term, but engines are a lot more expensive than converters. 

 

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I have an EA81 with hydraulic lifters out of my 1986 brat. It had some serious clanging when I bought it for $250 I pulled the motor and found that someone had attempted to adjust the valves and lost two of the nuts and lock washers for the valve rocker adjustment also one of the retainer clips on one lifter was missing I found that in pieces. So I pulled all the lifters, took them apart and cleaned them up and replaced all the retainer clips with snap rings so they are the same. Since I have to now adjust the valves I'm finding it hard to get it just right. I have all of them set as close to 0.002 as I can get. When I check the other side that had not been messed with they are much tighter with almost no room to loosen them up. And ideas on how I should adjust these would be much appreciated.

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