So long as you HAVE oil flow is the main thang!
Did you put any grease/lube on top of the lifters that may have partially stopped-up the push rods?!
I'd 'fire it' and see if it changes.
You got oil!....You got pressure!...so doubtful it would be a problem before you could shut it off and damage anything.
6sal6

Wow, that’s odd!! Is it the back cylinders on each side? Seems like it would be the lifters over the rockers. Is there a visual difference in the lifters?

Better to find now than in the car. This could only get worse as the engine gets up to operating temp.

Thinking I was done, the intake has been installed.  If swapping rocker positions does not change anything, checking lifters is next.

Pushrods new and verified clear line-of-sight through them

Sounds familiar to my situation when I was going through my engine. One of the things I thought was my problem was the amount of oil that was coming out of the lifter bores when cranking the oil pump. I tried 3 different lifters because of the placement of the holes in it for the oil to flow through. I ended up using the Comp cam lifters to go with the cam because the holes were lower in the body of the lifter. Although the Ford lifters looked sturdier the Comp lifters looked more like the ones you had that broke in your engine. 

Inside lifter is a check ball, spring, disc with a hole, and then retainer.

Either wrong sized ball, bad spring, something stuck, or bad seat for check ball.
Perhaps incorrect hole size in disc.
Perhaps debris stuck in lifter.

This was on regular hydraulic lifter in 289.
Yes, I took one apart years ago out of curiosity.

Last edited by Nos681 (4/20/2021 4:55 AM)

Looks like I get to go pull the intake.   GRRRRRRRR  If this turns out to be a lifter issue, these will be the last Ford lifters I ever use.   One had catastrophic failure on my 427 stroker.  I do not need this type of aggravation.

I have some used 100,000 mile lifters I just pulled from a 5.0.  I think I will swap one of those in place of the free-flowing ones to see if it cures the problem.  If it does, I will get new lifters and start over.   I cannot imagine the free-flow is caused by a rocker arm orifice, but that is easy enough to visually verify, once removed. 

Cab4word67 wrote:

And I thought I was the only one with engine problems . When we primed up my 289 the 3-4 times I had it apart just recently I too had the rear ones flowing mass oil. This last time the #5 cylinder had no oil after 30 minutes. So I went to O Rylie's and bought 2 Mildon lifters and in less than 30 sec I had oil moving on #5. That was 4 total bad lifters in my fresh rebuild. I don't know what brand they were but all is good now. Here is a question though. The soft plug in the rear leaked a lot of oil when I started to prime. Is that normal? 

You mean the round plug at the end of the cam?  There should be ZERO LEAKAGE at any external plug or seal.  If it leaks then, you can be assured it will leak profusely when running.

Thanks for your reply about the lifters flowing too much.  Glad to hear I am not the first it has happened to, and glad to hear your lifter replacement fixed the issue!  Now I am fairly certain what I have to do.
 

Here’s a good description of lifters.

https://mooregoodink.com/all-pumped-up-understanding-hydraulic-valve-lifters/

MS wrote:

Looks like I get to go pull the intake.   GRRRRRRRR  If this turns out to be a lifter issue, these will be the last Ford lifters I ever use.   One had catastrophic failure on my 427 stroker.  I do not need this type of aggravation.

I have some used 100,000 mile lifters I just pulled from a 5.0.  I think I will swap one of those in place of the free-flowing ones to see if it cures the problem.  If it does, I will get new lifters and start over.   I cannot imagine the free-flow is caused by a rocker arm orifice, but that is easy enough to visually verify, once removed. 

I used the Ford lifters for years, but the last set I bought for my 331 just didn't look like they were very high quality.  They had all kinds of nicks in the surfaces, and the packaging had fallen apart in the bigger box Summit put it in.  I sent them back for replacements, and those showed up in the same state.  So I exchanged them for a set of Comp Cams 87716 lifters and they were MUCH better in both appearance and packaging.  At $235, considerably more than the Ford ones, but my confidence in them is MUCH higher. 
 

The engine is going in Al McGee’s 65 fastback.  Come to the bash and check it out.

This is a perfect example of why you must check EVERYTHING when assembling an engine.

Well............glad you zeroed-in on the  bad lifters.
Brand new........FoMoCo replacement lifters at that and two are junk right outta the box!
Guess the little 8 year old chinaman messed up, oh well ! He ain't losing his job so no big deal for him.
Another web site was complaining abut even name brand lifters are the same quality as what you got.
Glad it will be ready for the bash!!!!!
6sal6