bwill03z

I’m having a BTR stage 2 cam put in my stock LS3 and going to change the lifters as well. The budget is kind of tight so I’m not going with Johnson’s, I’ve narrowed it down to the GM ls7 lifters and the Morel 7717’s. I know both will work fine but looking for opinions before I decide. The LS7’s are used in a ton of builds and are a decent lifter I’m sure but I’m curious who is using the Morels? They are significantly cheaper than the GM lifters and are supposedly better. I’m curious also how the valvetrain sounds with them as I’ve heard the LS7’s tend to be noisy. Anyone using the 7717’s (formerly 6504) ? Thanks

ApexClone

I just put Morel 7717 in my LS2 a couple months ago to quiet down the valvetrain noise after a cam swap (TSP 228/232 .600"). The noise was quieted immensely afterward. I also did bronze rocker trunnions at the same time so it might have been a combination of the both.

Car already had TSP pushrods and dual springs before changing the lifters/trunnions and the noise was incredibly annoying to me. I'm very happy now.

bwill03z

Good to hear, excessive valvetrain noise drives me crazy. Were you using the stock lifters before and did you change your pushrod length? The Morel lifters are shorter but require less preload so I’m thinking I’ll probably need a different pushrod length than with the LS7’s. I already have trunnion upgrade and yes that helps with the sewing machine ticking also.

Turbo6TA

Be advised ... the LS7 uses the same valve lifters as the LS3

same same

old motorhead

Out of those two, I'd choose option three...Caddy racing lifters.

bwill03z

lol I considered those also but found quiet a few differing opinions on them.

farmington

If you don’t have more than 50k miles, reuse the old lifters.

Spaceme1117

I recently suspected I had a lifter starting to go bad. I could hear a high pitched squealing sound like if a roller bearing was starting to go out and the noise was coming from the valve train area on the passenger side of my engine. Car is a 2011 Grand Sport with LS3. Only 34K miles on the stock GM/LS7 lifters.

I changed out the lifters to a set of Morel 7717's which I consider to be better than the stock LS7's. Because of the shorter pre-load, I did have to go to a shorter pushrod but no big deal. Valve-train is quiet (for an LS3) and no more squealing noise.

I would go with the Morel's and change out to brand new, geniune GM lifter trays.

StayinStock

I just did the caddy lifters on the same cam, Quiet as can be and no issues so far. I got about 3500 miles on it. My main reasoning was just to keep the 7.4 pushrod length because at the time no one had custom lengths in stock.

old motorhead

Yeah, I have 35K miles on mine with a .620 lift cam. No problems. I think a bunch of the bad reviews of the Caddy lifters came from a long time ago. Maybe a bad batch? Of maybe folks just didn't know how to set them up properly.

StayinStock

yep so far I have no complaints, I was going to go to a link bar but I didnt want to be waiting 6 months for pushrods and I already had 7.4 tsp's setting there so it was the logical choice. I have no complaints. Side by side you can see theres a bit of a quality difference between them and the regular ls7s imo.

bwill03z

Yeah one of the reasons I was thinking about going back with the LS7 lifters is so that I wouldn’t have to change pushrod length so I may just end up doing the caddy lifters too, Especially since you said they are very quiet

StayinStock

yeah I was shocked at how much it shut up my valve train over the ls7s I had in there prior. I think you'll be happy with them for sure. Not sure if anythings changed but the last I checked most places were like 4-6 months out on pushrods

bwill03z

ah I think the pushrod shortage has calmed down a little bit if I’m not mistaken. I’ve read before where some people swear by the Caddy lifters but also had read some failures but yeah that was probably in the past. They are quiet a bit more expensive than the Morels I was gonna get but I know the Morels have a much tighter preload window and will most likely need a shorter pushrod. BTR has the caddy’s in stock for $500

StayinStock

Thats good to hear its calmed down a bit. I think either way is a good choice. I will say BTR was awesome to work with. I had my stuff 2 days after I ordered. Those guys stay on top of it!

bwill03z

Yea they have a good reputation. I actually called them today and spoke with someone. I think it really depends on who you talk to because I believe in the past I asked someone there about lifters and they recommended the Morels over the LS7’s but the guy I spoke with today said he would either go with the GM LS7 lifters or the Caddy lifters, and that they were essentially the same lifter except the caddy’s have a ceramic ball and are better for high rpm applications… they are a little less than 100 bucks over the LS7’s so I might end up getting those. I’ve read some posts saying they’re junk but then others love them. Maybe it was just a couple bad batches or something

Speedboosted

I used the Caddy race lifters in my LS3 cam swap last winter. It was a near full package from Katech using one of their custom cams with an emphasis on road course use. They suggested those Caddy lifters over most other choices, which was all I needed to hear. I've been very happy so far and the valvetrain is pretty quiet for dual springs/etc.

CTD

I have a set of bad CRL's brand new in the box, when I tried installing them they would not easily slide into the plastic tray. Closer inspection showed cracks around the pin area mostly like incorrectly supported when the roller pin was pressed in. I was one of the lucky ones that caught it & most likely a bad batch as mentioned.....this was many years ago. The failure's I read about were rollers & usually catastrophic.

The problem I had with the LS7 lifters & noise was the bleed down with higher spring pressure. @ that time there was no chance in hell I would go back to CRL's so I'm running Morels.

I've always set the valve train up finding a good wipe pattern then ordering the correct length push rod. Lots of pushrods on my "should work parts shelf" along with camshafts, CRL's, Yella Terra rockers etc.

bwill03z

Im really confused because I’ve heard several people say they used the Caddy lifters and their valvetrain is nice and quiet but when reading older posts on the forum and ls1tech I read a bunch of posts saying they were good quality lifters but very noisy. The last thing I want is an excessively noisy valvetrain so I’m on the fence.

Yeah maybe the ones you had were some from a bad batch where they were older. I have heard that about the LS7 lifters also, that they don’t like high spring pressure.
So I’m confused, when people say to go with the Morel lifters which ones are they talking about? I was looking at the 7717’s (formerly 6504) they are a drop in lifter and priced very cheap, are these like lower end Morels? Are people talking about getting higher end link bar Morels, if so which ones?

rc51racer

For my LS2 build I used LS7 lifters when I did the TFS heads a few months ago with 1.8 RR and 228/232 TSP cam on a 112. I measured for new PR length several times to make sure correct and my valvetrain is as quiet as stock.