I snapped my exhaust camshaft...pics

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D See 2

Senior Member
well i was on my way home from a friends house last night and i was going about 115 or so and i went to shift into 5th but 3rd is what i got. it tached out to about 10,000 rpm.
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i have:
comp cams springs and Ti retainers with stage 2 cams (b16a stock shortblock)
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I didnt think anything really happened. the car seemed to run fine. so i went straight home and didnt mess with it for the remainder of the evening. Anyhow, i woke up this morning and popped the hood then fired her up. It started fine and I stood in front of the car listening for anything unusual... it sounded fine. As i was looking around, i noticed the exhaust cam gear was sticking out about 3mm more than the intake cam gear. right then i was like FUCK! so i shut her down and pulled the valve cover off. sure enough, the exhaust cam snapped over the #4 cylinder between the vtec lobe and the far left lobe... have a look see. the first pic is what it should look like. the second and third are with it pulled apart.

i'll pull the head later this week to see the extent of the damage. but luckily, i didnt hear anything unusual, and it seemed to run decent.

break.jpg


break2.jpg


break3.jpg


:cliffs:
i fucked up and shifted into 3rd instead of 5th @ 115 mph and broke my exhaust camshaft.
 
Shoot!! only 10K, I'm BUILDING my motor to handle like 13k and make power at 10k; I hope my skunk2s don't snap like that...
 
:doh: That sucks, but thank god that's all the damage. My buddy did the same thing in his semi-built gsr, and the rod went through the block and left a hole the size of a silver dollar.
 
Originally posted by MikeBergy@May 30 2004, 12:44 PM
Shoot!! only 10K, I'm BUILDING my motor to handle like 13k and make power at 10k; I hope my skunk2s don't snap like that...

:eek:

wtf for?
 
dayum... I've almost done that... (put it in 3rd instead of 5th) but I caught it before I let the clutch back out.

That sucks dude...what are you gonna do?
 
lmfao...a while back, driving Knive's hatch (pre-H22) in houston, i was freeway-racing some fucktard down I45...went from around a 20mph roll...instead of going into 3rd, i hit 1st at about 60mph...


poor d16.
 
ouch! yeah when we were tunning my friends' car, a toda stage 3 cam snapped in 5 pieces and a valve shot out of the megaphone and went flying across the floor!, it sounds like the damage will be minimal with being able to drive it home with no bad noises and all...
 
BACK FROM THE DEAD THREAD!!!

!!!UPDATE!!!

I got the head back from the machine shop a few days ago. It turns out that the cam journal was all chewed up from the cam lobes sliding side to side and grinding into them. So they had to hone that out.
Also, I bent 11 valves. All 8 exhaust and 3 intake valves. They had to be replaced and re-ground to match the head's valve grind.
Additionally, the pistons were hit on the exhaust side and are getting replaced.
14 of the 16 Ti retainers had to be replaced. And ZEX (Comp Cams) replaced the exhaust cam free of charge.
I had to send them both the exhaust cam and intake cam. They checked and tested the intake cam to make sure it was okay. And it was.
The valve springs checked out okay as well.
The Head now has:
-GSR Valves
-GSR Springs and retainers
-GSR Cams
Ready for TURBO!!!!
We figure that the reason all of this happened, is that the timing belt jumped a tooth or two due to the sudden surge of "downshifting".
And of course the ppics of the head as it now sits:

bare.jpg


lma.jpg


portwork.jpg


surface.jpg


asis.jpg
 
Originally posted by MikeBergy@May 30 2004, 11:44 AM
Shoot!! only 10K, I'm BUILDING my motor to handle like 13k and make power at 10k; I hope my skunk2s don't snap like that...
[post=341343]Quoted post[/post]​

just dont shift into 3rd when youre trying for 5th...ive done stuff like that, i went back into 1st trying to get to 3rd...felt like a serious car accident...the car pretty much stopped and whipped me forward...ill make sure never to do that again
 
damn...

i can't believe you were able to drive it home...

HOLY FUCK...
 
also, here's what most of the Ti retainers looked like...
The more i think of it, my motor had to tach out way beyond 10k...

ti.jpg
 
b, where is the spread sheet that you type in the tranny and tire size, and it tells you all the diffrent speeds at verious RPMs. I would like to put 115 as the speed for third gear, see what RMP he was at.
 
Maybe you should check the installed height of the valvesprings to prevent bind and cam breakage in the future......nice that they replaced the cam though!
 
Originally posted by nfn15037@Jul 29 2004, 10:42 AM
Maybe you should check the installed height of the valvesprings to prevent bind and cam breakage in the future......nice that they replaced the cam though!
[post=369811]Quoted post[/post]​


a well known machine shop installed the springs so as far as i know everything was at spec. The reason the exhaust cam broke was because all valves hit pistons.
 
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