Has anyone had cam failures????
Has anyone had cam failures???? I recently purchased a cam for my new motor buildup. From an engine shop with pretty impressive #'s from there cams. 1,000 miles on the new motor changed my oil had excessive amount of metal in my oil. Shortly after that my motor started to sound like a sewing machine. Tried replacing oil pump o-ring thing it was lifter bleed off. That didn't fix the problem. Then I tried replacing lifters. Nothing, sounded the same. Finally 2,000 more miles later and 3 oil changes during that time I was getting more and more metal shavings in my oil. So finally decided to pull my cam out. To my surprise all the lobes on the cam where f$#@ed up. Big indentions on the beginning and end of the lobe ramp. Plus the heal of the lobe was pitted bad also. What the hell could of caused this to happen.
It sounds like the problem GM had in the 80's with cam failures in the 305 motors, and I have in the shop a 99 SS that we were doing a cam swap on and the intake lobe on #1 was ground off to the tune of about 10.000 looks like the rollor tip on that lifter was having an intermentant lock up problem but its hard to say which occured first, so now the heads are off and the lifters are being replaced, just out of curiousity the cam was lubed with motor oil prior to install ?
Originally Posted by Red12secZ28
I recently purchased a cam for my new motor buildup. From an engine shop with pretty impressive #'s from there cams. 1,000 miles on the new motor changed my oil had excessive amount of metal in my oil. Shortly after that my motor started to sound like a sewing machine. Tried replacing oil pump o-ring thing it was lifter bleed off. That didn't fix the problem. Then I tried replacing lifters. Nothing, sounded the same. Finally 2,000 more miles later and 3 oil changes during that time I was getting more and more metal shavings in my oil. So finally decided to pull my cam out. To my surprise all the lobes on the cam where f$#@ed up. Big indentions on the beginning and end of the lobe ramp. Plus the heal of the lobe was pitted bad also. What the hell could of caused this to happen.
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I have seen this happen with RP Motorsport camshafts a while back. They were using Reed cams as their supplier and reground some sticks. Wasnt pretty a few miles down the road...
Out of 5 oil changes in 3000 miles all had a treamendous amount of metal flake and shaving in them. I don't think my drain plug could of caught anymore shaving on it. When I replaced my lifters because I thought they were bad my cylinder walls where scored. I'm burning about 1 qt of oil a week. I'm just wondering if any of that trash got into my crank and rod bearings. 
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I have no idea if what I am saying makes sense but it looks strange to me. Look at the lobe that has the big chunk missing out of it in the center of the picture. Follow the center of it and look around the edges of the "wear" line. Doesn't it look like there was metal added to the original lobe and then ground down? I see some jagged edges of discolored metal that looks kinda like a ground down weld. I am pretty sure my cam was all the same from center of the lobe to edge. Could they have used a cam that was a smaller, less agressive lobe and then tried to add metal and grind to your specs? It just looks really strange to me, but I have only seen 2 cams before, my stock one and the Comp Cam I replaced it with. Again, I may just be writing this for now reason, that may be normal but I can't remember seeing that on my stock or Comp cam. I have no clue, but that sucks and I hope the rest of your engine survives.
Matt
Matt
I have a cam i pulled out of my car a few months ago that looks the same as yours. My cam was a comp cam, that came with the car. Every one of the lobes had nasty nasty grooves ground in them. Two of the lobes had about 2mm deep grooves in them. The only thing different about my cam was that the grooves were in the tips of the cam lobes, and worked around the lobe. Every one of my lifters were wasted, and some of them had big chunks out of the rollers. I learned the hard way about buying a used car.
I agree with nbmls1ta - those lobes look like they have had metal added, then ground to a different lobe. Each lobe has a distinct line where the metal changes color and the pitting begins. Over the nose, the wear looks normal. Mid lobe, the wear pattern is definitely not normal.
What brand of cam was this supposed to be? If it were a comp cam, one of the ends will have the lobe numbers etched into it by hand. If it began life as a stock GM cam, it will have various numbers stamped into the end, but also a square bar code.
What brand of cam was this supposed to be? If it were a comp cam, one of the ends will have the lobe numbers etched into it by hand. If it began life as a stock GM cam, it will have various numbers stamped into the end, but also a square bar code.
I am going to look at the stock cam that we pulled out of the 99SS mentioned earlier in this thread but as I recall now it had the same look on the outsides of each lobe(darker shade) than the middle of the lobe, like I mentioned this cam only had one bad lobe on the intake of #1, dont know if it has any relavence to the cam in this thread but it is interesting. 