[TroyL]

Hi everybody,

97' 3.0 Vulcan with 186k miles, rebuilt engine at 168k miles.

Back in June of this year the cam position sensor failed on me causing the oil pump shaft to jam and chip one of the teeth on the camshaft. At that time I decided to park it and tear down just far enough to get a bore scope in to confirm the damage - 1 single chipped tooth on the camshaft gears. Thankfully no indication of any serious damage due to low lubrication even though the oil light did flicker for a few seconds before I could stop the engine. All cylinders pass leak down and compression test.

At this point I'm inclined to replace everything from the oil pump, shaft, synchronizer, position sensor and the camshaft itself.

So first question, and believe me this goes against my gut instinct, is that one missing tooth on the camshaft a show stopper or should I go straight for the replacement?

Second question, in the course of replacing the camshaft has anyone had any luck just loosening the carriage from one end, unbolting it from another and just tilting the entire assembly down toward the right side of the engine until there is clearance to slide the camshaft straight out ? I know this sounds a little bit outside the box but I'm trying to avoid having to yank the whole engine out of the car believing this might be faster if it actually works.

Thanks in advance,

- Troy

 

[ice445]

Really a judgement call you have to make. Given the age and mileage of the vehicle, I'd be more inclined to just run it the way it is. As far as the work to get the cam out, I'm pretty sure there's no way without pulling the engine. The third gen vulcans do give you a lot of room, but it would literally be faster to get a cherry picker on it, disconnect everything, take off the hood, and then lift it high enough to where the cam will clear the frame. You'd have to do most of that anyway to try and get some serious angle on it.

Can you get a picture of the damage to the cam gear? I'm curious.

 

[TroyL]

Thanks for your reply. That's a good point. The harness is already off of it. I removed the cat converter manifold because I already have a replacement in hand and the old one was giving me pressure drop issues.



I suppose it won't hurt too much to try lifting it straight up.



Has anyone ever done the job without pulling the transmission as well ? Does the transmission require a separate support to keep it from flopping over ?



I will definitely post a picture from the bore scope later today.

 

[ice445]

Also, I forgot to mention the cam gear just establishes timing reference for fuel spray with the synchronizer, the hex shaft is what drives the oil pump. So there's no harm running it and seeing if you get a code for cam timing out of range (the car can still run in a failsafe mode even if this code is set). Unless it looks like the cam gear is gonna come apart, it is a fairly safe bet to see if it will run as is without losing timing.