A friend of mine is appalled to hear that I didnt change my lifters with the cam especially with the 80K the truck has on it. Have any of you changed lifters? Is it necessary in my case? I may have to keep the 5.3 for a while as other things have come up.

 

i was wondering the same thing. is it really necessary? how do you keep the lifters up while changing a cam, with out taking the heads off. i plan on doing a cammed 6L and i was just going to take the heads off and replace the lifters.

 

I've never heard of anyone changing the stock lifters on a cam only ls1. All you do is insert some 5/16" rods into the two holes on the front of the block before you pull the old cam out. There is a good write up here: www.ls1howto.com

 

The stock hydralic roller lifters are ok unless you are going with dual valvesprings with a high seat pressure.

 

You never want to reuse flat tappet lifters when changing a cam, rollers like ours aren't a problem though. They don't "wear in" the way that the flat tappets do. Most of the guys here who did cam only swaps have re-used the stock lifters, myself included.