39 Cad 60S V8 lifter block assemblies

[Rick Rinehart #18151]

My engine block is worn beyond help.  I have located a good block and the same guy has lifter block assemblies but they are not the original assemblies that came with the engine block. My machinist wants original.  Another fellow tells me he has never had a problem mixing and matching.  Do I have to have all matching block, lifter assemblies, main bearing caps, camshaft,etc.?  Does anyone have the defininitive answer?  

[JIM CLC # 15000]

03-10-05
Rick, I see no problem installing lifter blocks from another engine.
When I got my 38 La Salle, it had an army tank engine with hyd. lifters in it.
I got a 47 engine, which had mechical lifters in it.
I installed the hyd. lifter,blocks and lifters/plungers in the 47 engine without any problems.
Good Luck,Cadillac won the deWars thophy for Mix & match, Jim

[Doug Houston]

I wonder where those mechanical lifters would have come from. That engine was never supplied with mechanical lifters. NOW, the original supplier of hydraulic lidters to Cadillac was Wilcox-Rich, through 1942, and possibly through the war. A new lifter design came out after the war, made by AC division. They looked different from the W-R lifters, but are interchangeable. Ive even seen the two types mixed in an engine, though this was surely from a repair job along the way.

On your original question, of course the lifter bodies are interchangeable for all V8 engines from 1937 through 1948. The 36 bodies were different, but I dont know in what way.

As far as main bearing caps go, they should stay with the engine, and in their original place. If any are replaced, the block should be line bored with the replacement caps in place.

I just finished an article for the Michigan CCCA magazine about the    1936-48 V8 engine and how it changed through those years. It took 6+ pages of copy and 10 pictures. Quite an adventure.

[JIM CLC # 15000]

03-11-05
Doug, the person I got the engine from had ran it in a dirt-track one season and had gotten the solid lifters some where, also, he had had the cylinders bored out and was running the standard piston for fast acceleration.
I had the engine rebuilt a few years later and had to go .60 over to clean-up the cylinder walls. But, obtaining the engine is another story.
Good Luck, Jim

[JIM CLC # 15000]

03-11-05
Rick,I got my March issue of the SS today.
There is an article in it about the later Cadillac flat heads and it speaks of the lifter bodies. (Cages)
Good Luck, Jim