I didn't even make it out of my break in period of the cam.....
During the first part of the break in I burned #8 and #6 plug wire and finally got my computer reprogrammed by MadZ28. It was running great as of last Saturday night when I put in the computer. As of yesterday with about 400 miles since the cam change it was running very nice. I was shifting from first to second and saw the check engine light flash on and off and the motor shut off. Lotsa fun in traffic. I managed to pull off and it started about 5 minutes later with a very erratic idle. Within 10 minutes, it was running fine again.
During the ride home it did it again. After starting it again I noticed the oil pressure was going from 40 to 0 (back and forth). I pulled over again and parked it. Knocking like a *****.
Soooo, I now have a very pretty black SS with a boat anchor for a motor and no money to fix it.
All of this and 61k on the odometer. Thanks for letting me vent.

 

On my camaro i swapped the cam @ 135k miles. Within 300 miles of the change the car started idling VERY rough and after about 10 miles of that suddenly my oil pressure went to about 5 pounds at idle and about 15-20 at WOT...clearly not right. Well i now have a fresh 355 in the thing and zero dollars left...so if it breaks on my now i'm totally SOL. I understand how you feel...i had to sell my 94 T/A (my daily driver) to afford to rebuild the engine in my camaro (which took me about 5 months to finally get the money and finish by the way)

On the bright side the camaro feels and sounds awesome now...can't wait to have it fully broken in. The other thing that sucks though is i've been through hell putting the engine back to gether and getting it in the car. AFter i got it running saturday i noticed a tranny cooler line leaking...i had to pull the tranny down to be able to tighten the damn thing...i think i have something like 60-70 hours of labor invested in this rebuild. At least the whole ordeal only cost me $1700 though...not bad for a complete rebuild i suppose.

 

That sucks man.

I didn't have a problem with my first cam swap but I am getting ready for another swap so hopefully I will have good luck with it.

Good Luck with the rebuild.

 

I really don't understand all this. I have done tons of cam swaps in older cars, but never an LT1.
Is antifreeze getting in the bearings, or something weird like that? Are the cam bearings in these same as older SBchevys?
people aren't knocking out a cam bearing are they?

There are enough reports of this problem, I bet there is a common preventative for this somewhere.

 

I dunno whats going on, I would bet anything its that stupid front cam bearing, Almost every single LT1 I've ever worked on had that bearing totally gone, I changed it on mine while the engine was in the car, took 10 mins, but if you put in a new cam into there, the bearing & cam won't like eachother cuz the bearing has groved nicely into the old cam somewhat, now the new cam might spin the bearing, if that happens, the oil gallerie going to the front main CRANK bearing won't get any oil.

Matt.

 

when i broke down the block all the bearings were worn badly...but the front one was basically just gone. We were pretty careful putting the cam in...and i've done a cam swap in a old 305 engine before without trouble. At the same time there are lots of people swapping cams into high mileage engines who have no problems at all.

 

Exactly what has to be done to change cam bearing? I am about to do a cam swap and if you can change cam bearings with motor in car I might try to do that, it might save me some trouble later on.

 

I'm just hoping mine doesn't spin. *knocking on wood*. :blah:

 

It is funny you mention this. When the cam was initially replaced, I replaced the front cam bearing due to the way it looked. It was not pretty. From the looks of the 4th journal of the cam, I probably had a problem with that one as well. I would have never known this had I not gone into the motor. Of course, GM has already told me that the car was out of warranty and was too old to file a claim. My argument was that a 61k mile car should not have had this trouble.

 

What would be the symptoms of spinning a cam bearing?

 

I agree with you about the bad bearings.

I posted about this in someone elses thread. I did a cam swap recently in a LS1 car for a guy who had under 50k on his block.
The cam came out pretty hard and when I inspected the cam bearings they were terrible but the first bearing was really bad. He ended up pulling the engine and rebuilding it.

I think a lot of these people have some worn bearings. I really haven't heard anyone mention that they inspected the bearings before putting the new cam in.

 

I take it up put it in the right way aswell & made sure you didn't get any metal into the galleries when you installed it? Also, its a bad idea to put a lot of cam lube on the lobes like everyone says I just put a tad bit on for mine because that stuff will starve the main crank bearings of oil aswell.

Matt.

 

I'm up to 3 cam ahanges on my LT1 with 97k on her and hitting 66 to 6700 with her. I guess it's a hit or miss thimg.

 

I wonder how much installing an electric wp reduces the chances of spinning that front cam bearing? I've not had any problems since my cam install, it was done at 57k miles, I've put 3k on it since with no problems. I installed a CSI wp at the same time. Someone should do a poll for people who spun a bearing after a cam swap, see how many kept the stock wp and who went with an electric. That would be interesting.

 

Gotcha beat: My very pretty black SS with less than 7 grand on a babied motor went to hell a couple of grand after a cam install and 200 miles after a head porting and installation.

Bought a new 4-bolt main short block and had the same cam installed. But I can tell you I am a bit gun shy.