question for those who have wiped a cam

R

ryan319

Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2006
what type of rebuild did you do after the cam wiped? i have two wiped lobes and i'm getting conflicting advice. some people just say pull the pan, inspect the bearings, flush the motor and put it back together. other say, pull the motor, add new bearings, hone cylinders and add new rings; basically a complete rebuild.

my motor has 5-7k miles on it and had good compression and oil pressure before it was parked to investigate the valvetrain noise. i also have a filter mag and magnetic drain plug. i didn't note any significant amounts of metal when i changed the oil and cut the filter open. as mentioned, the motor is relatively fresh and has already had the crank ground and the oil passages modified. i'm not sure if it can be cleaned up further even if i need to.

i'm planning to pull the pan and see what it looks like in there. if everything passes visual inspection can i just flush it out and put it back together? i really don't want to pull the motor unless i absolutely have to. btw, i'm putting a roller cam in if that matters.
 
I wiped 2 lobes and blew a head gasket at the same time. Antifreeze was in the motor so I pulled it apart and went for new bearings throughout. Maybe I got lucky but the crank wasn't scored up so I just went for the new bearings, cleaned and reassembled.

Since you are going to have the pan off, I'd definately suggest at least pulling a couple caps and checking the crank and bearings. It would be worth the time and minor inconvenience to know. What you see there will probably be consistant on the other caps and rods.

That's my $.02
 
i've decided to pull the pan with the motor in, check as many bearings as i can. then pull the cam and look at the cam bearings. if i find any scored bearings then the motor will come out. if not, then it's probably getting flushed and staying in.

since i had good oil pressure, compression, and didn't have any audible bottom end knock i'm optimistic but i'll pull the motor if it looks necessary.
 
ryan319 said:
i've decided to pull the pan with the motor in, check as many bearings as i can. then pull the cam and look at the cam bearings. if i find any scored bearings then the motor will come out. if not, then it's probably getting flushed and staying in.

since i had good oil pressure, compression, and didn't have any audible bottom end knock i'm optimistic but i'll pull the motor if it looks necessary.
Click to expand...

by the time you do all that you could have the motor out and then be completely sure lol
 
i know when i changed the cam in my car with the motor in it took like 8 hrs and i pulled the motor in like 5 and dis assembled in 3 hours messin around.so i guess thats about the same time but you got to look how long and how much harder its goin to be to check the bearings and stuff under the car.
 
I went through the same dilemma when the cam went in my car early last year......My uncle wiped the cam in his Vette SBC and just did a flush with a new cam....no problems. I thought about it but I have been through 3 wiped cams in this car before.

I did not want to pull it because I did not have the money at the time to redo everything like head gaskets and bearing....etc I decided to pull the engine and do a very good cleaning and it was a good thing...... I found #1 and 2 cam bearings with bad scars and a few rod bearings with some trash that I might have gotten away with but not for too long and some similar scaring and embedded trash in a few mains.

I decided to save for a roller kit and do a fresh build kinda....My engine had less than 5k on it. I did not pull the rings off the pistons but I installed all new bearings and just reassembled the engine.

It is running now and better than ever before.

I strongly suggest taking your time and saving up a few bucks if needed to a fresh build and do it that way once instead of again later.

Good luck
 
beleive me, i want to fix it the "right" way. i'm just going through the process of determining what that is. i don't like throwing resources at things that aren't broken.
 
FWIW, I wiped two cams in 3 months back before most people knew about the change in motor oil forumulation and how it affected flat-tappet cams. first cam was pretty trashed and the debris had started damaging the bearings so we replaced them. we caught the second cam much sooner and the bearings were fine so we just repalced the cam. finally got educated on the change in oil formulation and everything was fine after that. expensive lesson courtesy of the EPA. :rolleyes:
 
at7we2 said:
FWIW, I wiped two cams in 3 months back before most people knew about the change in motor oil forumulation and how it affected flat-tappet cams. first cam was pretty trashed and the debris had started damaging the bearings so we replaced them. we caught the second cam much sooner and the bearings were fine so we just repalced the cam. finally got educated on the change in oil formulation and everything was fine after that. expensive lesson courtesy of the EPA. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

from what i've recently learned, it seems that there's more damage when the cams go quicker, like during break-in or shortly after, because the lobes wipe in bigger chunks. and these chunks shred the bearings and crank. a slower "wearing" of the lobes only puts dust like metal into the oil. while this obviously isn't good, it's not always catastrophic to the bearings.
 
ryan319 said:
from what i've recently learned, it seems that there's more damage when the cams go quicker, like during break-in or shortly after, because the lobes wipe in bigger chunks. and these chunks shred the bearings and crank. a slower "wearing" of the lobes only puts dust like metal into the oil. while this obviously isn't good, it's not always catastrophic to the bearings.
Click to expand...


I agree with you on that.....I have had cams go during break-in and this last time the engine had about 5k on it and I literally caught it in the drive when I started it up. So the car ran maybe 5 min and I knew exactly what it was.

After I pulled the engine out I saw the "dust" like particles beaten into the rod and main bearings with some scaring. I most likely could have gotten away with a flush but I know that it would have showed it's face again and I did not want that to happen under 20psi.....more parts to fix.
 
The stuff will go everywhere in the engine but the filter should get the stuff getting pumped thru the engine. I know several people that have just wiped out the pan and at least one that did not even do that, and NO Problems after lots of miles. This is not just TB engines but Ford FE and Pontiac engines also.
 
i pulled the pan and some rod caps. no material in the pan, no scarring on the crank or bearings, and nothing in the pump screen. if material is small enough to flow through the pump screen it's not going to hurt anything. i had a pro look at the caps i pulled and the crank and he told me there's nothing to worry about. just flush it and put it back together.
 
ryan319 said:
what type of rebuild did you do after the cam wiped? i have two wiped lobes and i'm getting conflicting advice. some people just say pull the pan, inspect the bearings, flush the motor and put it back together. other say, pull the motor, add new bearings, hone cylinders and add new rings; basically a complete rebuild.

my motor has 5-7k miles on it and had good compression and oil pressure before it was parked to investigate the valvetrain noise. i also have a filter mag and magnetic drain plug. i didn't note any significant amounts of metal when i changed the oil and cut the filter open. as mentioned, the motor is relatively fresh and has already had the crank ground and the oil passages modified. i'm not sure if it can be cleaned up further even if i need to.

What did the lobes look like? If the metal from them wasn't in the filter,pickup screen,oil pan then where did it go?

Just asking. :confused:
Click to expand...
 
Guys,

It seems that there are quite a few "wiped cams" surfacing these days. I am the first to admit that roller cams make a lot of sense. I am presently building an engine for someone that lost a cam and is going to roller for performance reasons. Even so no one should feel pressured to go to roller for fear of failure with a flat tappet cam. Keeping the car stock, or cost reasons alone are good reasons to consider a flat tappet cam. I too observed this problem a few years ago. Looking at it scientifically it would be logical that someone with lots of cars or someone that works on lots of these cars would be most likely to see a "trend" earlier than someone that owns one or two cars. My observations resulted in a strong belief a couple of years ago that the oil formulations were indeed an issue. Until recently there were many that didn't subscribe to the theory that newer oil formulations could be a problem. To me it just didn’t' seem logical that these cars could function relatively free of serious cam issues for nearly two decades and then within the space of just a few years we start to see large numbers of failures. I believe that the problem is only going to get worse especially where TR owners have failed to take steps to protect their engines. As most everyone knows my solution was ZddPlus and fortunately I have been using it long enough that I seem to have my fleet under control. For many folks that is not the case. It’s sort of like smoking. Decades ago doctors actually did smoking ads for cigarettes. Over time they were the very ones that observed the problems with lung cancer since they saw so many "cases". For many years individuals failed to see the clear link between smoking and lung cancer. There was always the case of "my granddaddy smoked 2 packs a day till he was 95 and died of old age in his sleep". Unfortunately statistical analysis of smokers and lung/heart disease supports that your granddaddy was simply a statistical anomaly. There are still lots of TR's that appear have good cams and are using modern oil formulations. With time it will be clear that diesel oils or racing oils are not a good alternative solution. Boosting the ZDDP level to the levels common in the era of OEM flat tappet cam use is the only proven scientific solution. Some specialty oils are formulated to address the problem, but are usually somewhat expensive and not easily obtained. Evidence is very strong that if your TR cam still appears to be good and you have been using SL and SM oil for many miles your car is sort of like someone that has smoked for 40 years and has just recently quit. The damage may very well be done. The hardened surface of a cam is only about .020" and when that depth is exceeded total failure comes rapidly and catastrophically.

When I see posts where someone loses several cams in a short time it leads me to believe that there must be factors beyond oil formulations or at least other factors that are adding to the oil problem. There has to be a manufacturing defect, failure to assemble the engine properly, or inadequate break-in lubrication. While I can't do much about the first two things I can offer some real help with the third. I feel that the ZddPlus has comfortably fixed the oil issues that are necessary for engine break-in. While there are lots of special break-in lubes specifically designed for break-in I felt that the subject might bear some investigation. For the last eight months I have been involved with the development of a lube designed for only one purpose: i.e. to make break-in of a flat tappet cam just about foolproof. After testing over 20 popular brand name cam lubes and concocting many formulas, and ruining many cams and lifters we feel we really have something special. Big surprise we call it ZPaste. This formula uses a proprietary formulation of several Zinc Dialkyl DithioPhosphate (ZDDP) types with a Molybdenum DiSulfide (MoS2) additive in a new formulation Calcium Sulfonate base. 90% of the lubes on the market depend totally on Moly for the active ingredient in cam lubes but ZPaste is totally different. Moly is not a good thing to put in oil for long term use but it is helpful for short term break-in and used along with large doses of ZDDP it makes for a pretty impressive lube. Our testing has shown that this lube is so tenacious that you can actually run an engine for half an hour without oil and the cam lobes and lifters will show virtually no signs of wear, scuffing or galling. Of course without oil your engine will be ruined in the first few seconds but the cam and lifter will be just fine. This stuff is so good you would have to work at it to ruin a cam during break-in. It will be a while before I have the packaging ready for sale but in the meantime anyone that would like to use this for an engine rebuild just send me an e-mail and I will be glad to send you enough to rebuild your engine. Used in conjunction with ZddPlus in the oil it will take the worry out of using a flat tappet cam................RC
 
I knew it wasnt over for the flat tappet...........

Good work A2000RICH!

I doubt we will see a recovery in the flat tappets reputation but im willing to try again using some of your Lube!

A.j.
 
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