I'm a long time reader of this forum and am happy to have finally made an account. Hello all.

I've been searching all over the forums and google and cannot get a straight answer on this since so many problems trigger the same key words.

TL;DR version.
Can you test the hydraulic valve lifter/tappets to make sure they are not damaged and good for reuse?

Little background
I'm working on a '98 V70 2.4L Turbo. The car had a bad engine coolant temperature sensor that caused it to overheat multiple times (without knowing because gauge said everything is fine) and finally stopped running. It's cringe worthy. I'm not the driver of the vehicle and I wish the lady that does drive it... would pay more attention...

Anyway, did a compression test got 90-0-0-35-120. So decided to remove the head. We had heard some bad noises and feared bent valves, skipped time, collision scenario.

Pulling the head off everything looks good on the pistons. Lots of carbon build up and the valves are covered in horrible corrosion, but look pretty regular other than that. Today I discovered an oversight, the head gasket had holes eaten through it where it sits on over the water jacket chamber.
We took the head in to check for warpage earlier as well, and found may 15 thousandths of deviation around the 0 cylinders and went for machining it down.

This weekend I'm going to test the valves for good seal as we dont think they made contact with the pistons and should not be bent. Then I'm going to pull them and re-lap them, clean everything up, replace the seals and check the springs. Topping it all of with Victor Reinz gaskets and seals. Should make for nice engine.

-----------------------------------

The main question is the lifter/tappet (everyone seems to call them based on preference). All of them have no motion when squeezed with fingers, but i figured that would be difficult anyway. But 3-4 of them have play in them, like a squishy hydraulic... and go back to position after squeezing.

What should the normal state of these be and can you test them for defects before I reinstall the cam? I don't want to put bad ones back in the car with all the other lovely work being done to it. Should be a pristine engine once put together and we're not objecting to buying a new set of lifters, but I dont see a point if they are fine. Tops are all flat, no sign of damage or uneven wear anywhere.

Just need to know what their normal state should be and how to test them to make sure they are ok to reuse.

Thanks in advance for all your expertise and for being the best car forum on the web. =)

 

I had the exact same question. Did you ever get an answer?
Does anyone else know?