Thread: Camshaft wear.

well if it was lack of lube you might see this but if it was lube then it might be more frequent in other areas of the cam also. was the cam properly lubed when installed if not this could also be a cause of this kind of oddish wear. not enough lube before installation then torquing it down could have prematurly worn this cam guide

I never touched the engine before.The previous owner may have. The car was all stock when I purchased it.


The car never runs low on oil. I make sure of that. I even keep a quart in the trunk sometimes.



I will recheck those but I am pretty sure they were clean.


There was a actual chunk of metal under the cam cap. About a 1/4 big, it may have came from the cam though.

Possibly, I never touched the engine though.I did notice the cam cap bolts was not at the correct torque though. They were slightly looser than normal but tight.



This engine was quiet as day. This is why I was in so much shock when I popped the valve cover.



I don't understand ben?

wow im amazed..

I don't know the history of the engine, so I think anything is up for grabs.

I have seen this happen to an sr18di motor. The cam cap in the middle of the cam shaft suffered oil starvation and the cam wore like this and then to the point of snapping and the non chain end that snapped off was nearly welded in place.

x (however many on the oil clog)

last time i saw this, there was a piece of rtv stuck in the oil passage from the block to the head.

Yes, that's what it looked like,the cam got welded to the journal. I will check those oil squirters today asap. The oil gallery in the journal was not completely blocked but there was some crap on top of it from the cam. I swear my new process every time I pop a valve cover will be to check those for now on.



Ben is that what you were talking about?

No, but any oil blockage of any kind could have caused the issue like sqd said. I was just saying it's possible (maybe not likely?) that someone took that cam cap off and when re-applying it they put RTV in the wrong spot. The FSM says to seal the outside of that cap with RTV. Maybe someone got confused and sealed the entire thing causing RTV to squish into the cam bearing area or maybe they even filled up the entire oil groove with RTV by accident because it looks like an all the other grooves that you put RTV in. I know it's a long shot. You'd be able to tell if they sealed the entire thing once you took it off. You'd see RTV on all of the mating surface instead of just the outside. Now that I look at the pics I don't see any, but maybe there is some?

It probably happened because of a simple oil blockage like others have said, or the over-tightening of that cap, or a combination of the two.