Thread: dirty cams

picked my girl up a ve for her g20 an it was deliverd yesterday, out of curiosity i popped the valve cover..







an thats what i found..

now, i've seen worse an other than a lil build up they look fine, no sludge in the head what so ever.. it looks like this engines been sittin a while an thats prolly why the cams look like this..

should i run the engine this way or what? i figured what i would do is when i added oil i would leave the VC off an pour the oil all over the cam lobes ect.. that way when i start it they're already nice and oily..

i've done some reading an mostley everything says they'll be ok, but i wanted your guys opinions..

TIA.

It looks as if the motor was ran low on oil. Its hard to tell by the pictures though. That is kinda what my cams looked like on my de when it was ran low on oil for a few thousand miles. But it could be anything. Just think, it rains and snows over there and your motor could of been sitting in the weather or in a container underneath something leaking. I would take the cams out and clean them up if I were you and get a new oil pump for sure.

yea, they dont look oil starved, i've seen lots of oil starved cams.. they just have a thin build up on em, an it seems the ones near the oil cap are a tad worse.. im sure its from sittin in the cold/wet or whatever..


any reccomendations on cleaning em?

When I got my Ve it had a little build up on the top of the lobes near the oil cap. When I drained it, milkshake came out of the oil pan, but I got the idea that the motor was pressure washed and water got it there and settled. There was no milk in the oil blow by tube, oil filter or anywhere else. Inside the motor was super silver and clean and had never been cracked open before I got it also. The oil cap that came on the motor was some Pitwork one or some after market garbage.

As for cleaning the cams, I would say to use something very fine and delicate. Maybe some emery cloth or something on the lines of that. I was lucky and only had a little on two or three of the lobes and on the top of them. I ran about 20 quarts of cheap oil through my motor in a weeks time and they cleaned themselves. Hope this was a little helpful.

I wouldn't use emery cloth, if you're going to pull the cams just give them a wash in a solvent based cleaner and if that doesn't get it all off i'd go for a bit of autosol on a rag, then clean them again in the solvent to remove the autosol, oil them up and install. Just my 2c

Ide use some scotchbring pad and solvent..

3m makes emery cloth in 1500+. I have seen people use this stuff on more than one occasion to clean cams and it never leaves marks, just a nice clean surface. But, your 2 cents is also a good idea.

ok cool, i'll look into all the stuff you guys mentioned

im sure he would take 30 bucks as no one buys these....

http://www.sr20-forum.com/naturally-aspirated/27714-fs-sr20ve-cams.html

I would use and have used emery cloth and never had any issues. Use at least a 1500 and it should be fine