what would it hurt to reuse the stock lifters??? a friend is on a budget and he wants to clean and reuse them and I cant convince him to just get new ones

 

You really need to give more info than that. What truck / vehicle is it, what year what engine, what are the specs in other words? In Different year trucks you are able to reuse stock lifters and on some years you cannot with the DOD lifters.

As for reusing the lifters if it is a non DOD truck, yes you can many people have done this with no issues. If the engine doesn't have a ton of miles on it I see no problem reusing stock lifters.

 

the guy he got it from said around 150000 miles but he tore it down and it doesnt look like it had that many miles on it suppose to be an 01 5.3

 

If its an 01 then it doesn't have the DOD. The Displacement on Demand is in the newer trucks. Well IMO if it has near or over 100K miles then I would replace the lifters with LS7 ones since it sounds like he already has the engine apart. The LS7 lifters are the replacements and they are a little bit longer than the stock lifters btw.

When you do a basic cam swap on the older 5.3L engines, you don't even have to take the heads off unless you are changing lifters.

 

Jrm, I always like how you jump in on these threads and take the time to help out. What's he even wanting to re-use the stock lifters with? After a cam swap? Just tearing down the motor for the hell of it? Since budget was mentioned, I'd just tell your friend the ol' saying... "Cheap, fast, reliable: pick two." If you can't afford to do it right the first time, how can you afford to do it twice?

 

LS7 lifters are only around 150 bucks. Best to spend that little extra money and have the better parts in the end.

 

Thanks CC05.

Good point on your last post.

I assumed they were going to end up putting a cam in it sooner or later. Since they already have the engine apart it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and replace the lifters.