can anyone help me out i have an 01 and i'm first time cam swaping. everything went fine untill i went to put in the passenger side ( left side if your looking at the front of the vehicle) cam lifter tool. i bought 5/16 rod and ground it down and smoothed it out even put a flat spot on it. it will go in about an inch and it feels like it hits something solid ( lifter?) i have seen that other people have had the same problem. does anyone know how to fix this problem?

 

Try rotating the cam while gently inserting the rod and see if it will go in. The lifter may not be up enough to get it in. If that works, I would pull both rods, push the lifters down with a pushrod and then spin them up again to see if you can get it to clear.

 

I had the same problem but it was on the driver side. The pass side was tight but the driver would not go in for ****. I used smaller rod 3/8th I think. It was loose but I pulled the old cam and stuck the new one in right away with no problems. All my lifters stayed up after I pulled the dowels. How many miles on your car?

 

there are 39k on it and yes i did use the pushrods to try and loosen up the lifters and sprayed oil down the pushrod holes. i did try spinning the cam and everything. i took my homemade tool to work and ground the **** out of it and made flat spots hopefully it works. it just puzzles me bc the drivers side went right in and is pretty loose. also the lifters apear to be staying up and not falling down but i am not about to take any chances thanks alot guys

 

I bought 5/16th dowl rod and didnt do anything to it, left it round, and it slid right in, however there was one lifter hanging too low on the passenger side, so i just went to autozone and bought a pen magnent and had my dad hold it up while i slid the rod in, yanked out the old cam, and stuffed the new one in.

 

ok so i ground the **** out of the tool today and it slides in about 6 inches or so so i geuss i need to do more grinding but i tryed the pen magnet thing and it doesn't even move the lifter at all its just not strong enough.. my bet is that i could probly get the cam out and in before the lifter drop but i really want to have insurance with the tool. does anyone know if the lifters are still saposta be able to travel up and down with the tools in? i can spin the cam and the lifter will still go up and down if i push them down with the pushrod

 

I would just spin the cam a few times and go ahead with the swap. Be smooth and make haste and you should be fine. GM designed the lifter trays to keep the litters in place during cam swaps so why not use them?

 

ok i got the tool to finaly fit in snug i had to grind the hell out of it about 5 times to make it fit smooth. i will go ahead with the cam swap tomarrow thanks for the help and good luck in the future

 

how did it go?

 

what i had to do was just keep grinding the road down... its almost that the 5/16" will sliding right in the drivers side of the engine and you need 3/8 rod for the passenger side... i have an 01 block by the way. you know what else i think is funny the 01's are saposta have a one piece spring seat/oil seal and mine were seperate???

 

thats interesting I thought that too since I read it off of the cam swap guide on ls1howto

I wasnt going to mess with my seals regardless.

 

I believe the one piece seal/seat was introduced in 02.

 

i just reused my old seals cause the ones i bought from a member dicked them all up with plyers and when i took my seals off i didn't even have more than a scratch on them
and i was told that the 01's had one seal/seat but obiously not