cam failure cleaning motor tips?

[Turbo 6 Justin]

Okay so my buddy wiped the cam in his motor last month on startup, we are just getting the parts back together and are doing assembly in the next few days. So we obviousely had to clean the motor out, our process was to take a few cans of brake cleaner and run it through all the oil passages (we did leave the heads on as they are sealed nicely) then took a plane old hose and washed everything down real good, did the same with the turbo, oil lines, front cover and ignored the cooler since we will not be using it again. So is this a good procedure or should we do something else before we start assembly? I've never had to do this before so I am just looking for advice.

Thanks!

 

[gofstbuick]

I sprayed my engine parts down with oven cleaner, then washed the engine parts with hot soapy water, rinsed and air dried. I used a wire brush (obtained from a local firearms retailer) to clean my oil passages.

 

[Steve Wood]

It's a big gamble. Sometimes you can get by with that but there is no guarantee that you have not left metal from the cam inside.

The only sure way is to pull the engine, disassemble everything, pull the oil galley plugs and run a rifle brush thru every oil passage along with hot, soapy water. Lot's of work.

I have seen many an engine with a bad cam that none of the above was done to....just simply swap cams and change the oil and they ran apparently okay. But, I have seen quite a few that very soon after......blew up.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

The best answer is to own at least three of these things so you always have time to do the job right and still have at least one of the other two that will run when you need it.

 

[PaulRV6]

Where did you see most of the babbitt smeared on your bearings, any particular position? Mine seemed heavily wiped at the 10:00 position looking from the front of the motor, 1,2,3 were bad and 4 was not bad at all.
Took the complete motor apart to clean everything out. I also wanted to save the head gaskets since they were brand new, but decided to remove heads, pistons the works.

paul

 

[tazgn]

The only way I got my block finally cleaned good was to bring the block to the machine shop and have it dipped. But of course this requires tearing it completely down.... But I was one of the unlucky ones who kept TRYING to get the bits and pieces out and kept wiping bearings until I finally said screw it and tore it completely down and brought it to the shop. That's about the only thing I really trusted the shops around here to do on my motor....

Derrick

And besides, It's all pretty now too!!

 

[Turbo 6 Justin]

actually the main and rods were not that bad at all and probably only had a few pieces go through it and there was no real pattern The cam bearings however were very funny looking you could see exactly where the oil comes into the bearing it was a like a < comming from the oil hole

With that said we noticed that the cam was wiped just in the last few minutes of the breakin so it didn't run very long and it only took #3 exhaust out and only .100 at that so it was not as much material as say the monster 3 totally round lobes thing. there was a lot of cam material in the turbo oil return line which worries me a lot