banshee365
Veteran Member
Hey fellas. I've got my new BRM under the knife for some general maintenance and cleaning. Long story short I bought it for less than $1k from the owner off a VW dealer lot with a bad turbo diagnosis. I was able to hear it run and had seen the issue before with another BRM. I got it home and confirmed that the EGR valve was bad. Problem solved.
Currently I've got the turbo and intake manifold off the car for cleaning. It needs a timing belt, DSG service and a new EGR cooler. The car ran great prior to disassembly other than the huge leak on the cars 2nd EGR cooler.
The car has 262k miles. The cam was replaced at the dealer after holing some followers about 140k ago. The car has alway's had it's oil changed at the dealer. I have all the invoices. Thousands spent on this thing at the dealer. Lots of thousands. Even though the car was running fine I wanted to look at the cam. I pulled the valve cover and found what I have ALWAY's found when inspecting cams on BRM's. The chamfering gone on several exhaust lobes.
It's so easy to say the cam is garbage. I understand that. I wanted to get some outside opinions on a few of these photos as far as where some of you would go. To me it looks like it needs replacement. But... I'm already dumping a LOT of money in parts in this car and don't want to drop ANOTHER $600+ on a new cam. My labor is free so going back in to do the cam in another 40-50k isn't a huge deal to me. It seems silly to do the timing belt and not the cam with it looking like this but I want to weigh all options here.
If I were going to replace it, I would probably go with a Febi or one of the general base line cams with a BEW grind. I agree that Frank's kit is the best way to go but I have other irons in the fire financially at home. I can see the updated black followers but without removing the cam I can't tell the condition.
Currently I've got the turbo and intake manifold off the car for cleaning. It needs a timing belt, DSG service and a new EGR cooler. The car ran great prior to disassembly other than the huge leak on the cars 2nd EGR cooler.
The car has 262k miles. The cam was replaced at the dealer after holing some followers about 140k ago. The car has alway's had it's oil changed at the dealer. I have all the invoices. Thousands spent on this thing at the dealer. Lots of thousands. Even though the car was running fine I wanted to look at the cam. I pulled the valve cover and found what I have ALWAY's found when inspecting cams on BRM's. The chamfering gone on several exhaust lobes.
It's so easy to say the cam is garbage. I understand that. I wanted to get some outside opinions on a few of these photos as far as where some of you would go. To me it looks like it needs replacement. But... I'm already dumping a LOT of money in parts in this car and don't want to drop ANOTHER $600+ on a new cam. My labor is free so going back in to do the cam in another 40-50k isn't a huge deal to me. It seems silly to do the timing belt and not the cam with it looking like this but I want to weigh all options here.
If I were going to replace it, I would probably go with a Febi or one of the general base line cams with a BEW grind. I agree that Frank's kit is the best way to go but I have other irons in the fire financially at home. I can see the updated black followers but without removing the cam I can't tell the condition.