Cam photo opinions

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.

That cam is toast I would replace it if it were my car, since you are already there with a T/B Job I would just do it.

Yeah, that cam is junk. I would wager your lifter is <20k miles from wearing through.

Here's a non-picture way to test the cam... run your finger along the side of the lifter lift profile(s).

If the edge feels sharp in any way the cam has already worn past the chamfer on the edge and is gone... you can look up the wear specs for the cam and the dimensions of the chamfer. Convince yourself by running your finger along a non-profile section of the cam, where the factory chamfer still exists.

That said, based on the pictures, I'd say have a bandaid ready for after the "run the finger along the profile" test... it looks awful sharp from here.

That last picture is the worst - you can clearly see the ragged edge where the chamfer is completely gone.

Needs a cam, lifters, bolts etc.

As for timing, (tee hee), replacing the belt and leaving the cam is silly - you might as well do both at the same time.

The lobes wearing away are dumping metal into the pan. Do you want that to continue?

Windex said:

That last picture is the worst - you can clearly see the ragged edge where the chamfer is completely gone.

Needs a cam, lifters, bolts etc.

As for timing, (tee hee), replacing the belt and leaving the cam is silly - you might as well do both at the same time.

The lobes wearing away are dumping metal into the pan. Do you want that to continue?

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All of the exhaust lobes are sharp. The lobe profiles aren’t worn much but the chamfers are definitely gone. Looking back through the paperwork with the car I found in the tech notes that followers were worn through on the last cam change. There is metal put into the pan when that happens. Some say it’s a good idea to change the oil pump when that happens. I’m wondering if I should look at doing that for the reasons of high miles as well as possible metal particle wear.

You really need to use the right oil

narongc73 said:

You really need to use the right oil

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Who said I was using the wrong oil. I've put like 300 miles tops on this car. The previous owner bought the car with 68k and it currently has 263k'ish. I have all paperwork for service from the previous owner. The cam was done at the dealer roughly 140k ago. All oil changes since then were done at the dealer with 505.01 Castrol 5W40.

I'm putting the parts list together now. In the past I've used the Joe Gibbs BR 15W40 for the first and second oil change. It's a pretty expensive endeavor at around $100 for the 10 quarts. I know that Franko6 recommends this procedure. Is this still the best way to go or is using 5 quarts of the Gibbs oil for like 200 miles followed by your regular 505.01 something that would be considered acceptable?

I pulled the rockers today with the intention of removing the cam as well before ordering. To my surprise, with the rockers out of the way, most of the lobes really didn't look too bad. I went through the paperwork to find that this cam has about 125k miles on it. The problem is the #2 exhaust lobe. It's pretty well shot. There is some scaring on the base circle pretty bad as well. If it weren't for this one lobe I would probably run the cam for a while longer. The photos are in order from the furthest forward valve to the furthest rearward. The last photo is of the #2 exhaust lobe base circle.

Hm... Two lobes look not good.
What about installing a magnetic drain plug and switching to some CJ-4 oil for a while and see what happens?
1 mm missing material on a lobe or two shouldn't impact much.

I'd also be worried about what the followers looked like, cam I just pulled out of mine looked like yours. Once I got it apart one and could see the followers one was dished bad. Who knows how long it would have lasted but I didn't want to chance it.

Now I have piece of mind, new cam kit, new timing belt kit and I will know what kind of oil is going in it, I do my own maintenance.
Plus I plan on driving it into the ground and then some so I figured it was a worthwhile investment.

The followers in the car are the hardened versions, because the cam has been done once before. So, I bet they are pretty good. The #2 exhaust follower may have some spidering and odd wear but I bet it functions just fine. I've already spent about $50 by removing the injector rocker bolts. I could spend another $20 to get the cam the rest of the way out, but at that point it will feel REALLY silly putting it back together with one of the lobes sharp like that. I'm holding off on an order from the dealer until I figure out what to do as the cam kit I'm looking at has the factory bolts and tandem pump gasket so I can leave those out of the online dealer order. If I decide to put it back together as is I can throw the $50 of rocket bolts in the order and call it good. At this point I'm pretty well committed to dropping the coin on the cam and be done with it. I got the car for $900 anyway but dropping this $1500-1600 into it with lots of parts sort of defeats the purpose of buying it cheap. But after that it will be REALLY sorted under the hood. My parts list is totally huge right now.

Honestly, I don't believe in that "one time bolts" gossip.
At a shop there were a lots of cases where head work has been done. Be it cam, head removal, anything. Some owners (actually most of them) choose the cheapest route and reuse these rocker and cam cap bolts. Never heard of a single failure of them.

Henrick said:

Honestly, I don't believe in that "one time bolts" gossip.
At a shop there were a lots of cases where head work has been done. Be it cam, head removal, anything. Some owners (actually most of them) choose the cheapest route and reuse these rocker and cam cap bolts. Never heard of a single failure of them.

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I don’t think that is a good idea. I’ve done lots of research on TTY bolts in various applications that I’ve wrenched on over the years and feel that reusing them with factory specifications is a bad idea.

Might or might not be a bad idea.
Anyway, another problem is that even official dealerships usually do not have these bots in stock. Also, they are not available with a new head bolt set, new cam, etc... So that would mean 2-3 days wasted waiting only for the bolts to arrive. As no one has them in stock.
In a shop time is money. For some customers (e.g. Taxi drivers) car downtime means losing money too...
Again, never seen one of these rocker and cam cap bolts fail. If the failure percent is less than 0.5%, I'm fine with that.

Besides, you should apply slightly less torque on the rocker shafts at #1 and #5 cam caps. The problem is they ate the last points of support for rocker shaft. When applied factory spec torque, they seem to get slight deformation (not visible by eye of course)

The proof of replacement requirement is in the followers at this point. I removed the cam today to take a look and all 4 exhaust followers are worn beyond serviceable condition. The cam and follower set has 125k miles on it. I bet a lot of this damage is from a lack of proper break-in process at the dealer. I can about guarantee that the dealer installs the parts, changes the oil, cranks it up and brings it around front for the customer to pick up.

Cylinder #1


Cylinder #2


Cylinder #3


Cylidner #4

So what do you expect dealership to do? Sit and rev the engine while stationary for 1 hour?
With Joe Biggs oil?
They simply do what VW suggests. And VW (as well as cam manufacturers) suggests just install, fire up and drive.
Besides, when you buy a new cam, sometimes (depending on manufacturer) it comes with installation instructions. All they say that after installation, you fire up the engine, listen for tappet noise. If noise is present, rev the engine to 2500 RPM for 30 seconds, then listen for noise. If noise is still there, repeat. Not a single word about a special oil or specific break in procedures/period.

Also, here in Europe VW dealerships avoid to replace cams alone. Usually entire cylinder head is being replaced. From what I have heard, this is what was recommended by VW.

It's Joe Gibbs oil and it's the best break-in oil I've ever used. It's only 1/2 hr for initial break-in.

Try Googling cam break-in. There are only 10,000+ articles with several touting the value of first 1/2 hr break-in being the 'life of the cam'. We ascribe to that principle and it shows in our product longevity.

And as for replacing the entire cylinder head, that is a crock. That is for the good of VW, not the customer.

Next point, maybe you haven't broken off any cam bolts, but they are specifically stated as TTY and not reusable. Same thing with the injector hold down bolts. And if your experience has not shown you a broken-off cam cap or injector hold down screw (it's only a 6 x 1.0 screw...) you will love the effort to dig the damn thing out of it's recessed hole. We have personally done it as an experiment, but we have extracted a few dozen of the broken bolts, and if I never do another one!... A true PITA... You may get by with the rocker shaft bolts, but the stretch on the cam cap bolts is not worth the risk. In our opinion, a set of chrome/ moly bolts, with similar properties as the ARP studs, are a great compromise and are entirely reusable and less than 1/2 the price of the OEM stretch bolts.

Changing to a different oil is not going to fix a ruined cam. That is head shaking nonsense. And by the way, I'd be willing to bet it's not 1mm(.039"), I bet it's more like .020" (.5mm!) 1/2 the wear you suggest on the two lobes, that are ruined... I mean RUINED! An original lobe height is 2.430" -2.432". Wear limit is 2.424" or a grand total of .006-.008", so if it is ONLY 1mm??? You are off the scale for grenade cam followers and there is a pile of hard metals scraped off of your cam and cam followers to clean out of the oil pan.

The lifters are trashed. The oil pump is probably scored. This is NOT acceptable wear.

Do you realize what a huge difference in cam height you discount as unimportant? There are Stage III cams that are little more than the 1mm increase in lift. Our Stage II cam is .020" additional lift and the performance difference can be felt.

Injector hold down bolt MUST ALWAYS BE REPLACED no questions asked!
After you remove it it's visually longer than a new one.
Haven't noticed the same effect with cam cap or rocker bolts but I'd suggest replacing them too.

Ok, so you have recanted on 1 issue. How about the rest?

1) We would never replace a cylinder head when the cam is what is at fault.
2) A worn cam is not going to fix itself by changing brands or API of oil.
3) Break-in oil is a reasonable and valuable service to protect an expensive cam.
4) a PD cam is effectively worn out with .006" loss of lobe height, not .039"!
5) Match any 2 TTY bolts of the same type end-to-end. If the threads don't fit together, it's stretched.
I'm going to add another:
6) If the cam followers are badly worn, as are two of the cam's lobes, the oil pump is suspect. Damaged Pump? Replace it. This cam issue is in part, an oil volume issue.