Camshaft and rockers

[redbeard]

Been seeing all these camshaft and rocker failures all over here, Facebook and other public forums and cannot help but wonder what the frick is going on.

No particular Isx seems to be immune to this problem, wether it is a dual or single cam.

A lot of the pundits claim that bad maintenance i.e., to long of oil change interval, not adjusting valves are to blame. Totally preventable in these circumstances

Low oil pressure seems like a reasonable cause, along with dirty oil and tight valves. Again totally preventable.

My question is why isn’t the rebuilding mechanic doing a Rockwell test on the camshafts to check for hardness of the face and compatibility with the rockers beforehand?

What about having the camshaft parkerized or some other type of treatment to aid this what seems ridiculous failure rate.

Camshaft failures have been around as long as camshafts. Just throwing in another camshaft and hoping you got a “good one” just seems basically lazy to me. There has to be solution that severely slows down the failure rate.

Let’s all learn something and discuss some options.

[Chamberpains]

Proper oil change intervals, proper oil, a gallon of gear lube with every oil change, shimming the oil pump for higher oil pressure and routinely running the overhead adjustments will easily stave off almost all cam failures for easily more than a million miles. Cam failures are a thing of the past once you get a good education on this forum.

[Rawze]

(02-20-2019 )redbeard Wrote:  Been seeing all these camshaft and rocker failures all over here, Facebook and other public forums and cannot help but wonder what the frick is going on.

No particular Isx seems to be immune to this problem, wether it is a dual or single cam.

A lot of the pundits claim that bad maintenance i.e., to long of oil change interval, not adjusting valves are to blame. Totally preventable in these circumstances

Low oil pressure seems like a reasonable cause, along with dirty oil and tight valves. Again totally preventable.

My question is why isn’t the rebuilding mechanic doing a Rockwell test on the camshafts to check for hardness of the face and compatibility with the rockers beforehand?

What about having the camshaft parkerized or some other type of treatment to aid this what seems ridiculous failure rate.

Camshaft failures have been around as long as camshafts. Just throwing in another camshaft and hoping you got a “good one” just seems basically lazy to me. There has to be solution that severely slows down the failure rate.

Let’s all learn something and discuss some options.

the best solution is preventing the systemic neglect instead of blaming the problem on everything but lazyness and el-cheapo truck ownershit methods.

I got 1.3 million miles on my valve train and cams, still look pretty good. Never seen one fail prematurely where someone took good care of the engine + did whats recommended on this forum.

on the other end of things ...

The highest failure rates I have seen on them is with people running synthetic + extended oil changes. This is simply a different form of engine abuse to sell/market expensive synthetic oils. Next to that is all the guys who let the soot get into their engines so bad that it causes oil pressure drop + soot buildup between oil changes. - Pulling off the engine cover, the oil/top end smells like soot, is jet-black, and anything you touch in there, its hell to get the soot out of your skin or clothing. -- this is abuse,.. most of the time from not performing oil changes often enough, combined with not keeping after the EGR/DPF system and its health (EGR tune-ups).

[redbeard]

(02-20-2019 )Chamberpains Wrote:  Proper oil change intervals, proper oil, a gallon of gear lube with every oil change, shimming the oil pump for higher oil pressure and routinely running the overhead adjustments will easily stave off almost all cam failures for easily more than a million miles. Cam failures are a thing of the past once you get a good education on this forum.

Check mark for all the above for me. This forum is a real but saver, and much appreciated

Thing of the past? I would like to believe so. But it just seems that it is a popular problem that should not be.

Maybe Cummins should update there maintenance requirements so others do not fall to the prey to the monster.

At least Cummins has come out wth an updated oil pump. Maybe that updated bypass valve wasn’t the answer after all, I never believed in it. Just my 8 dimes of insight