If you're careful and have a steady hand, lifter surfaces can by reground with a bench-top belt/disc sander. Using a Starret combination square, I set the angle of the table on my sander to 1 degree and hand-sanded the cam surfaces on a set that were flat-ground. You end up with a one degree cone shape. The one degree was per Crower instructions. They apparently grind tapered lobes. Anyhow, the cam and lifters have been in two engines for pushing a hundred thousand miles with not trouble. Yet.
That solves the cam-surface issue on used hydraulics but they do wear out inside eventually, although the problem is usually sticking from infrequent oil changes.
I ran DELO 15-40 for years while I had access to an unlimited supply but that dried up and now the metal package has been reduced so I'm still using DELO C-K but with a ZDDP additive but not a whole bottle.
I'm still waiting for Jerry to degree one of the Melling/Elgin cams he's got to see what the profile really is without clearance ramps. I have several used cams I can set up in V-blocks to check but there's no ID marking on them so I don't know what they came out of except they were engines of mine at one time. One, I know, is a Howard's grind that was indistinguishable from stock when measured with a mic. but I didn't degree it. I'll do that sometime this spring.
