Adrenaline_Z

Did you forget to put oil in the motor?

Looks like the surface layer has been taken off.

Roller cams rarely fail. I have seen some of the hardened layer wear down
on a couple rollers in my time.

BottleRocket

they dont wear enough (on the lobes) to even matter. I had 230k miles on a 302 I tore down and the cam looked great. no groves on the lobes anywhere

BottleRocket

holy **** what happened?

Byter

iTrader: (1)

What happened? I don't know. There definitely was oil in the car and I think it happened over a long period of time. I had this cam in for 60K miles! Possibly the camshaft wasn't heat treated correctly. The lifters looked good, plus this wear only occurred on the first 8 lobes of the cam, the back 8 were perfect.

Obviously, you can see why I thought this was my only problem, that's why I did the H/C swap. However, after doing the swap, the same engine noise was happening, hence, the new shortblock.

777

iTrader: (21)

Sound to me like the tolerances weren't set up right...

cyphur

iTrader: (10)

my first thought was that the lifters went bad. other than that wtf?

Camaro_Zach

iTrader: (19)

old cams used to, back in the days of non rollers. cams would actually "go flat" and just need a new one. but um, not the ls1 haha.

zracer28

iTrader: (1)

Thats really nasty. Hope mine doesn't look like that when i pull it out this weekend.

Derek98z

iTrader: (55)

I had one lobe of an old cam look like that. It still ran like a raped ape though

Byter

iTrader: (1)

You may be right. I didn't install that head/cam. It would seem weird though that 8 lobes had a problem and 8 did not. You would think that almost all of them or just a couple would look like that if it was a bad lifter(s) and/or bad tolerances. However it did last over 60,000 miles. I hope I get 60,000 out of my new setup!

LiquidFire350

iTrader: (8)

id like to shake the hand of the man who told you, that you needed a sound system because of your cam

Oscar Will

I have seen LS-1 type engines with failed camshafts, it doesn't happen very often but the most common failure is when a piece of the cam lobe either fractures or the hardfacing flakes off. From that point it starts to damage the lifter roller and if not fixed soon it will sometimes cause enough clearance gain to toss a pushrod and start braking other pieces. In our dealership I have seen two in the past couple of years (that is a low percentage of the 1000 warranty repairs per month we perform).I have never seen a cam bearing fail on one of these yet.

Oscar Will

...like that!! "Byter" had what I would call a typical hardface failure. I have no clue what causes this but I doubt it was anything other than a crappy hardening job.

LSONE

iTrader: (1)

i'm not making fun of you, but that cracked me up.... especially after reading all your mods.

Byter

iTrader: (1)

At least that is what I told the wife!

BottleRocket

Honey, my cam is worn out so I need to go out and get some Z06 calipers and Bilstein shocks along with a $4000 shortblock...



DAMN, the next girl I get I am NOT teaching as much about cars.

Byter

iTrader: (1)

Ok, Ok! Not all of the mods were purchased after the bad cam. Most of the non-engine mods I've had for a long time.

Derek98z

iTrader: (55)

My wife looked right at my brand new $500 spec 3 clutch on the garage floor and had no idea what it was =)