I just finished cleaning my pistons & rocker arms after I lost a cam lobe. You WOULD NOT BELEIVE how much metal I pulled out of the saulvent bucket when I trolled a magnet through it..And the engine only ran for about 2 hrs..

IMHO anybody who chooses to just flush the engine, swap the cam & change the oil is REALLY rolling the dice!!

I would post some pix of the bearings, but those pictures are not for the squeemish :eek:

I would imagine that the damage after two hours running versus 5 months running while wiping a lobe would be greater,my sons truck has wiped to cams,took appx 5 months for both to wipe,with no signs of metal in the oil at all,apparently it was caught in the filter. :confused: Cam #3 is in the truck and running,been in since January,no problems yet and still holds great oil pressure. I imagine it was the person that assembled the motor that did such a great job :D

Glad to hear it, but I can tell you that I am SO glad I decided to pull it & rebuild...Just too much metal in there for me. Although I guess after swaping the cam, all the metal would eventually end up in the filter.. I was just amazed how much there was, especially in the top end..

About half of the bearings were scrap, the other half were so-so..

are you the one with the siezed BB and couldn't get the trans seperated w/o spilling the torque converter?

No - I did see that post, that was the one that made me feel a little better about what happened to me ! My case was nothing spectacular, just a flat lobe.

PS
I hope all worked out for the guy that happened to...

I hear ya. When we wiped a few lobes on a bad warm-up there was plenty of cleanup work to be done. We pulled the engine and sent it back to the shop to have them disassemble/clean/reassemble everything.

No problems in 3 years. graemlins/thumbsup.gif

How do lobes get wiped out? Rockers set on them too tight? Or better yet, how can we avoid this!

That, without a doubt is a good question! In my case, the only thing I did that was not "by the book" is that I didn't remove the inner springs for break in. Although there are many that would say that the springs were not the cause..

I'm gonna guess on ours that it was one of two things:
1. Improper RPMs during break-in
2. Improper matching of cam to lifters (It's been a while, but I think we used them from two different manufacturers.)

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!
(Either one is a bit of a lunkhead maneuver, if you ask me, but live and learn!)