Well, since I finally got around to pulling the motor out of my TC I decided it would be nice to start a thread about it. With PICS!
Anyway, about a month ago she started to make a noise and backfire through the carb. I traced it down to a sticking valve. So i pulled the heads, and everything was "ok".
Today I pulled the motor to further troubleshoot. Turns out the lifter was sticking and that caused my cam to fail. I do not plan on re-using this block. However I was wondering what I could do about re-using the heads. They are E7's. The valves arn't damaged or anything, but I was worried about the valve guides being hurt. Any suggestions?
Here are the pics.
And here are the pics of the cam and lifter.
A valve job should cost about 75-100, guides arent that bad to put in. then you will have fresh heads.
What happened run out of oil or pressure?
Pressure was the root cause. My next setup will have an oil pressure gauge inside the car and not just under the hood.
That thing ran? There's pretty much no lobe left.
I doubt that, about every thing else will fail from low oil pressure, before the cam...
Do you think it's possible that the valve stuck first, then caused the lifter to stick and then damage the cam?
See that's why I'm not sure about re-using the e7's.
That's pretty much what I was thinking: Did you rev it too high and bend a valve? Backfiring through the carb would indicate a valve that wasn't closing, not one that wasn't opening. I'd pull that valve out and check it for being bent. If it's really bent you might have difficulty getting it out...
The valve is out. I ran it across a countertop and it didn't wobble. So I'm going to say it wasn't bent.
Time to go roller anyway.
Roller... Meh.
I was thinking 460 redneck tire smoking machine. But that's not in my budget.
I feel your pain! I was driving along last March and my engine(83 3.8l Carbed) started running like , you know,dropping a cylinder or something, I figured it was bad gas since the tank was almost empty. I hit the freeway headed home and less than a minute in she started knocking at certain rpms. A month or so later I tore it down, and one of the #2 or# 3 cylinder cam lobes was a bit worn, rotated the lifter and it was toast! Probably worse than yours, but I drove it probably 20 miles like that.
Pulled the cam out and the front cam bearing was shot, severly pitted. Pulled the bottom end, and the crankshaft main and rod bearings had these really odd wear patterns, like the block needed to be line bored or something. Anyway, sorry for hijacking, good luck with that.
You might not see a wobble on a counter top. Put it in a drill and spin it up :hick:
Never thought about the drill trick. That's good info to know!
measure to see if your heads are flat, and make sure gas dosen't leak out of the "dish" in the heads. I really wouldn't worry about them too much if those two things work out.