cam gear woes

[J10-401]

I lost the teeth on my cam gear. It seemed to happen all at once because it was running OK at 70-mph one minte and then the motor just died.

Teardown shows the slot on the back of the cam timing chain gear doesn't line up with the oil hole on the cam. The hole is about 65-percent eclipsed. Is that enough to make a serious problem? The gear wear at its worst on the teeth areas that only get the auxillary oiling from the champer on the back of the gear.

Bits of gear teeth all in the timing chain cover. Well I hope the filter kept it out of the main bearings.

Plus another stupid thing I did was put a new re-curved dizzy in with the original cam gear. This was about 1000 miles ago (ran great too). I should have used the old dizzy's gear on the new dizzy.

Plus, I installed a midplate and nickle-plated filter adapter. Got about 10 more PSI. But maybe it just put too much of a load on the gear set.


So the plan new is:
New Bulltear TC Cover nickle plated.
The oil pump gear with the HRC grooves - to lessen the pumping effort.
Matched Cam and Dizzy gear from Bulltear.
Drop the pan for general clean up.
Check a main bearing.
Run 10-30 instead of 20-50 oil.

Anything else?

[Ristow]

dang-that sucks.

especially in a nice truck like yours.

[Elliott]

Sounds like you have it covered, but do you really need to pull the pan? That sounds like a lot of extra work and anything laying down there ain't gonna float up through the pickup screen is it?

[J10-401]

phots added

Already did it. I'm running paranoid on this one maybe.

Pulled a main cap. Inspection looked just fine. Lots of debris in the bottom of the pan. None splashed on on the rods or cylinder-walls, thankfully.

Actually none of the chips got into the oil pump either. So I think the teeth shreaded very suddenly so the pump couldn't suck any chips up.

[J10-401]

Here's the photos

[Ristow]

looks to me like they simply wore to the point of breakage.