Toy Machine- My '54 Willys CJ-3B Revival

Hi everyone this is Toy Machine.
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It is a 1954 CJ-3B with the following mods
1964 Buick v6 225 Dauntless
Rochester 2gv double barrel carb
Saginaw power/tilt steering
Soft top/ bikini top
heater under dash
Extra rear gas tank

Riding in this cj-3b as a young boy is a fond memory and when I heard it was for sale at the the age of 21 (in the year 2000) I jumped at the chance to buy it for $2400. I drove it for a few years with constant maintenance and no brakes till it broke down again and I never got a chance to fix it . Well now I'm 38 and the poor yellow beast has been sitting for over 12 years in the boneyard.

My conscience has now got the best of me and having some time off work lately, I went and pulled the old bone out and have been tearing it down and fixing the major sqwauks on the list. There is quite a bit of rust but I am only looking to slow the aging process really as I'm in no financial position for full resto right now. Upon inspection I found that I was getting no spark, my carb was "frozen" shut and it was very hard to turn over the crank by hand at first. My coil was week and my external voltage regulator was rotted away. So I've recently added a pertronix igniter and their flamethrower 3.0 ohm coil and also uprgraded the alternator to a delco remy 10si with an internal regulator. Doing this eleiminated the external regulator and also the ballast resistor. Got it all installed and it wont fire. Slight cough is all I got. I'm getting spark. So the I convinced myself I might be 180 out on the distributor and spun it but still nothing. After a day of scratching my head I decided to pull valve cover so I could be sure I was on compression stroke and "looky there!" the rocker arms aren't moving on half my valves. So I'm guessing I've had a lifter fail or push rod fail.

I pulled the intake and the cam lobes don't look to bad but I will say that about a year after I bought the Willys I had to weld/fill a 1/4" groove in the cam lobe that the fuel pump hat put in it

Gearheads and Wrench Monkeys- Can I just replace the lifters/rods or should I do a whole cam swap also?

 

Welcome from Mississippi.
If a pushrod were bent you'd be able to see it, especially with the intake off. Personally I'd replace the cam and lifters for peace of mind but if you're confident in your old camshaft you could replace just the lifters.

 

New lifters +old cam =bad .should be done in a set i.e. New lifters, new cam.