cam failing?

kmarino

Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2005
just wondering what are some symptoms of the camshaft goin flat? my car has been makin a tapping noise for awhile that has gotten worse. car also runs alot richer,erratic idle on start up, loss of power. if you put a pry bar on the cam sensor, it thumps pretty good. cam is a 210/205 that has around 50-60xxx miles.thanks
 
Not using zinc additives.

I.E.- using todays off teh shelf SM grade oils and a FT cam
 
symptoms

you will get a dead rythmic miss that will be worse at lower rpms. probably some tapping in the valvetrain. you will also feel a tightening in your wallet region. be sure to go roller next time. good luck been there.
 
I have had two go on me. My Chevelle it was noticeable by the rocker tap and by how much I had to adjust the rocker to get it quite. This was years ago before this problem became well known.

Just last week I found it happened on my GN. I didn’t notice any different rocker noise then usual. But I did notice that the car lost top end power. Upon investigation I found the crank thrust was at .012. So I pulled the motor and found cylinder 1 and 2 intake lobes flattened, along with wiped main bearings. The previous owner used Mobil one synthetic without any additive. From what I hear synthetic is too slippery and the lifters can stop rotating. Roller all the way.
 
Yeah I've got the same thing going on. It really showed it's self this weekend. The Idle is getting rougher. Hate to open it up but I'll finally get rid of this "mystery" tap on the 2-6 side.


Off to see Kenny D. tomorrow, funny that he mentioned a good roller profile about two months ago to me. I should have written it down. (Note to self: I should write EVERYTHING he says down.)
 
my car started and idled fine...anything above 1500rpm had a miss like a fouled plug ,after alot of digging and unnessesary work found flat cam #1 ex
 
All this talk about flattened cams makes me want to swap out my stock cam for a 206/206 roller. I just gotta locate a good shop here in central Florida, or do the swap myself.
 
Mine wouldn't really show itself until I got into boost, higher Rpm's. Boost over 8-10 Psi and a solid stumble in fourth at WOT. Mine was an exhaust lobe.
 
Mobil One What?

I bought my T in '88 with almost 40k on it. Changed to Mobil 1 and it now has 195k (just last week kicking a 2010 Mustang GT's ass) on it. Can't say it's hurt the stock engine. Changed timing chain and valve cover gaskets @ 130k and everything looked clean. No carbon or gooie slime anywhere. I Like It!
 
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