PD cam replacment options - see photos

Thank you to Frank06 and R90sKirk and all the others that looked at and offered advice on my PD cam.
If anyone else would be willing to offer an opinion here are the most revealing photos I could take.

Look carefully at the top, right area of the cam lobe.



In this one you may see the cam follower with some marks.

I don't know if this is bad, really bad or something that will go for another 100,000 miles. This is the worst one. I think it is no.3 exhaust?

The car is an '06 Jetta with now, 104,500 on it. It is new to me and I have no way knowing what oil was used.

My options as I see it are to try Frank06's cam bearing and oiling modification or replace the entire cam, followers, bearings, etc.

The previous owner had their mechanic replace the timing belt and water pump- but not the tensioner or rollers. So I need to have that done.

What are my other options? What would you do?
What oil would you use? Please be specific -brand and wt.
Thank you all.

Do the complete cam/follower replacement and Franko6's oiling mod.

I do not think either action alone would do the job.

That follower looks pretty bad to me. I would not drive it much longer.

Dan

It looks hot enough that it is getting heat transfer metal. I can't see the lifter, but I don't think I'd take that car on a long trip.

It's not an either/or situation with your engine. The cam is toast and the lifter(s).

I defer to Franks judgement.

Make sure to add your failure to the data collection post.

Hi Dougsbug

Did your car show any symptoms or did you just decide to remove the valve cover and look??
I have 107 000 miles and counting(800 a week),what symptoms should I look for?

some say you can look at the idle stabilization values per cylinder in VCDS and determine that something is wrong.

You could keep driving for a while but it will send metal flakes into your oil and eventually eat the cam down to wear it won't open your valves enough if it makes it that far. I would get the parts ordered if I saw that as a failure is soon to follow.

I once inspected my cam and lifters (at about 70,000 miles) and I could not really tell much. Runs fine, no obvious wear on cam and lifters, but there was polishing. At 100,000 miles at timing belt time I contemplated taking another look, but decided to do an oil analysis inistead (I never did one before). Actually the first time I removed the drain plug (I always used a Pela Oil Extractor). Plug took suprising little effort to break free. Oil was nice and hot and mixed up from just running the engine. Cought a nice sample mid stream. Iron was an amazing low number of 16 ppm. 10,000 miles on the oil too.

http://pics.tdiclub.com/data/500/Oil_Sample_1.pdf

I am sure my cam and lifters are fine.

Try an oil sample and see what iron number you get.

--Nate

No real symptoms on my part. Good power, runs well. I figured I better check as I did not know about any oil change history. Plus, r90sKirk suggested I take a look. It is really kind of a bummer. Love the car but not too keen on spending this kind of money.

Here is what I had.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=216617&highlight=camshaft

You could just drive it till you have running issues and hope it doesn't mess anything up. Just depends on what the car owes you for life and what you want to stick in it. A cam is cheaper then a whole engine.

Game over, new cam and lifters...

Time to switch to Mobil 1 Turboe Diesel Truck 5w40...