Lifter help please...

[fiveohpatrol]

Is your gage showing no oil pressure at all? or is it just low?

If none at all, then most likely something got down into the oil pump when you changed the head gaskets, thats what happened to me a couple years ago. My bearings were all scorched too, and I only ran it for a few minutes.

You really need to torque your rockers down on the base circle of the cam. This is the only way you will get an accurate torque reading, because the spring will be pushing up on the rockers with the same amount of force on each one.
BUT I really think that most of the noise is from no oil pressure. Its exactly what I went through, the pump locked up after a head gasket change, and I thought it was the sending unit that was making me see no oil pressure, and the noise was from the rockers that were mis-adjusted. BOY WAS I WRONG! I guess i was just in denial at the time.

Ok enough about me. What you need to do to see if your pump is still in working order is to try to spin the pump by hand. You can do this by removing your distributor, and sticking a combination of a 1/4" socket (1/4"drive as well) with a long extension down in the distributor hole. The 1/4" socket will fit over the oil pump driveshaft. You then turn it by hand, and if there is no resistance, then your pump driveshaft has snapped because your pump locked up. If you feel tension but can turn it with a socket wrench, then your pump is NOT locked up. But make sure the tension is not the socket rubbing inside the hole.

Or then again, you could always just drain the oil, look for metal particles in it, and then bang on the pan and listen for the broken shaft clanging around in there.

good luck