94' 3.0 Valve Lifters Major Failure, ADVICE NEEDED

[19Walt93]

Well, I would be willing to replace the cam if that's what needs to happen but I do not intend on removing the block. I've replaced my clutch before, separating the block from the trans is not a job I want to do again anytime soon. I plan on doing the best cleaning I can with the oil pan + front engine cover off, some compressed air, and a whole lot of oil. I will open up the oil pump again and clean that out, I'll replace it if I see any damage whatsoever.

I already have some junkyard rockers, pushrods, lifters, and dogbone lifter guides, but taking the camshaft out of a junkyard car won't be so easy (especially considering the only 3.0 at a junkyard near me is a 1994 3.0 Aerostar, no space to work with, everything takes extra time/work).

Any idea where the best place to buy a new camshaft would be?

You can't possibly get the oil passages clean enough to know all the ground up cam particles are gone. The oil passages in the crank also have ground up metal in them, you're putting an expensive band aid on a bullet wound. Cleaning out an oil pump that's been exposed to metal grindings would compare to rinsing out a used condom, possible but not worth the risk. I hope you get away with it but experience tell me you won't. Will it be easier to pull the engine after it eats up the money you'll spend putting together again? I honestly wish you luck. But when it bites you reread my next line. I told you so.

 

[Uncle Gump]

I just don't see any way the coolant usage and they roller lifter retainers breaking are related.

As to how they broke... galled rollers then twisted... bent push rods... dropped seats... something... that shit just don't happen.

I might even be looking for a low mileage replacement. I certainly wouldn't just clean it up and put it back together.

 

[gaz]

@94' Ranger ,

Because of this statement,

"I am NOT trying to go for take #3 on this job, if anyone has any advice or an idea about what might have caused my issue and how to prevent it from happening again, I'd really appreciate it."

I perform a complete tear down, this should prevent a similar failure from reoccurring. Otherwise you are asking for a repeat.

 

[RonD]

Yes, I would agree
Unless you can find a definitive cause for the coolant in the oil and the broken lifter guides I wouldn't put any more money in that engine as is
And yes that cam should not be reused

Go to car-part.com
And see if there is a 3.0l OHV long block available in your zipcode

 

[Angie]

I have a strange idea on why this could happen.... the lifters are from the same side .... any chance that the rocker rail wasn't torqued down properly and she all let go then the rollers lifted enough to jump and spin in the valleys then eating the camshaft? I am not aware of what is involved in a 3L... but that seems to be the most logical explanation.

 

[94' Ranger]

Yes, I would agree
Unless you can find a definitive cause for the coolant in the oil and the broken lifter guides I wouldn't put any more money in that engine as is
And yes that cam should not be reused

Go to car-part.com
And see if there is a 3.0l OHV long block available in your zipcode

Just like @RonD said, I refused to put my truck back together until I definitively knew the true cause of the lifter damage. I hate to admit the root cause of all the damage was such a stupid, easily avoidable mistake, but here's what happened.

I'll start where I left off. I found my 2 missing lifter rollers still in the lifter holes, sitting on my camshaft. I pulled them out with a magnet, inspected them, and found that luckily no needle bearings were missing. However, one of the lifters had obvious damage sustained from heavy impact.

I originally wrote this post after pulling my heads and seeing the lifter damage, but it was not until I pulled the front engine cover off to clean metal shavings that I saw the actual root cause of all my problems.

When I pulled my front engine cover, I saw my camshaft bolt was completely backed out, threads and bolt head slightly damaged, just sitting on my timing chain. When I installed my camshaft bolt the movement of my timing chain sprockets did not allow me to fully torque down the bolt. I don't specifically remember torqueing the camshaft bolt down any special way the first time around. My best guess is that while working late at night (one of many, many late nights) I might have taken a break after setting the timing chain + sprockets in place and forgot to fully torque it down when I resumed working again.

The rotation of the camshaft caused my camshaft bolt to back out and ram a ~1-inch hole straight through my front engine cover into my water pump. So the mixing of the Oil/Coolant was from the hole in the timing cover and the camshaft/lifter damage was caused by the camshaft being completely loose in place.
At this point, I had gotten multiple opinions on my camshaft and decided it needed replacing. The conclusion was that there was no damage that would have caused immediate problems but over time that small amount of damage would have caused undue wear on all the related components.

I was looking at 250$ for a new camshaft and 275$ for a new front engine cover. I decided 500$+ was worth a full day at the junkyard so I got to work on the only junkyard car with my engine, a 1994 3.0 Aerostar half an hour from my house.

I was able to pull the rockers, pushrods, lifters, lifter guides, front engine cover, and camshaft for a total of 128$!
Soaked them all in gasoline for 2 days (sloshed it around here and there), then each part was inspected for damage (everything looked pretty pristine) and individually cleaned with gas + a vibrating toothbrush, then soaked in 5W-20 motor oil overnight.

So the last step of the process was cleaning all contaminated oil and metal chunks/shaving out of my engine.

I used about 2.5 gallons of 70% gasoline and 30% 5W20 oil mixture to be able to effectively wash down all the contaminates without stripping all my engine components of lubrication. I sprayed the mixture with spray bottles, sloshed it directly into my camshaft area, and used magnets for hours on end pulling every fragment of metal out of the block that I could reach. Side note, although my gas/oil mix worked perfectly for my situation, I Inhaled wayy too much gas vapor during this job. Even with my garage wide open and a fan going, I felt dizzy and disoriented while/after cleaning and needed to take breaks when it got bad. Honestly took a week to feel 100% again.
I got about 10 metal chunks and a bunch of tiny shavings out and pieced them back onto my lifters to see how much I was missing. There were evidently 6 chunks still missing in my block somewhere after the intense cleaning, that is the best I could do. I was only able to clear my camshaft travel area (which is somewhat enclosed with oil journals throughout) with some level of certainty as I could easily look around, reach with magnets, and wash it out thoroughly. As a last-ditch effort, I bought a super-strong neodymium magnetic drain plug on amazon for 25$ to recover the missing metal in my block. I also was able to recover the piece of my front engine cover that broke off from the water jackets in my block. I used a straw and vacuum to pull up all the non-magnetic chunks of timing chain cover out of the block and felt very confident that I recovered everything.

After figuring out that the improperly torqued camshaft bolt was the real cause of the lifter damage and was satisfied with my somewhat lackluster cleaning job, I felt confident to start reassembling my engine.
I bought new head gaskets, head bolts, intake gaskets, valley seals, timing chain cover gasket, and water pump gasket.
I put red Loctite on my camshaft bolt after thoroughly cleaning the threads and bolt hole with brake cleaner, then torqued the new camshaft bolt down to 30ft/lb. The rest of the job went pretty smoothly.

I filled her up with 90% water 10% coolant and some cheap oil, and started her up. I perfected the timing, added coolant over the course of an hour, then took her on a couple of trips up and down my street. Everything sounded great!

I kept topping off the coolant over the next 24 hours and out 60 miles on it, then flushed the coolant and drained the oil. The oil change was the happy ending to the story as seen below.

EXACTLY 6 CHUNKS OF METAL STUCK TO MY NEODYMIUM DRAIN PLUG along with a bunch of metal shavings.

Filled her up with some Mobil 1 high mileage 5w20, 75/25 coolant/water. and called it a done job. After 22 days straight of working in the garage, my truck is finally running again and 200+ miles post-rebuild. No dripping on my driveway and she's running stronger than ever.

She lives again!

Thank you guys for all your input, I really appreciate the community here.

 

[RonD]

That's some fine detective work

Sorry it was your engine though

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Thanks for posting your detective work.

When I'm doing work on my vehicle, I keep a paint pen handy for marking bolts once finished torqued. A mark on side of bolthead and corresponding mark beside bolthead so I can see if they back off over time (for the bolts that can be seen). This works really well for jobs that take weeks or months to accomplish, but also is good for one hour jobs too.

 

[superj]

man, that is so crazy how those pieces stuck onto the drain plug.

 

[Uncle Gump]

So... I understand the coolant in the oil... but doesn't the cam have a thrust plate to keep it in place?

 

[19Walt93]

I hope you get away with it, I probably wouldn't. Aluminum shavings wouldn't stick to a magnet and, since the cam slid out of place enough for lifters to be destroyed, the cam bearings had to have been damaged too. I have my fingers crossed for you.

 

[94' Ranger]

I hope you get away with it, I probably wouldn't. Aluminum shavings wouldn't stick to a magnet and, since the cam slid out of place enough for lifters to be destroyed, the cam bearings had to have been damaged too. I have my fingers crossed for you.

The cam journal bearings were the last thing I was concerned about during reassembly. One or two of the journals had very minor scratches/grooves, I taped a microfiber cloth to a long metal rod and spun it around the cam bearings to check for any 'grab points' where it had raised metal. Luckily, it felt smooth as could be and after some further inspections and second opinions, I decided the journals were still good for use.

The aluminum front engine cover is not magnetic, that's true. However, if you look at the impact hole on my timing cover, it's obvious that the impact of the cam bolt pushed the entire chunk into the water pump (based on the shear marks on the timing cover) which then got shredded by my water pump blades. I thought I would end up finding these aluminum chunks in my radiator but they actually were in the water jackets of my block.

At first, I recovered these medium-sized fragments with a stick magnet with heavy grease at the end to adhere to the chunks. I then found a way to clean the inside of my engine block REALLY WELL. I found a long, double-wide drinking straw and taped it onto a shop-vac nozzel and started hearing chunks fly into the vaccuum. I not only recovered 100% of the aluminum fragments, but I also cleaned the hell out of my block water jackets. After ~30 minutes of vacuuming, I also ended up collecting all this semi-metalic sediment from my block!

I was very surprised at this amount of build-up in my block, already having done 2 coolant flushes this year and having used that red-devil coolant flush product. I guess flushing the coolant doesn't actually clear out much of the build-up in your system.

I finished the job off by doing 3 more coolant flushes after a 60-mile drive. The first flush had a super thin layer of oily build-up, filled her up with 90% water, and drove another 10 miles. The next flush looked pretty goddam clean, but I decided one more flush would get it perfect. The last flush looked like clean clear water, so I filled her up with ~75% coolant and 25% water and called it finished.

I put the garden hose through my radiator, cleared out the radiator hoses, and cleaned out the block to where I am now quite confident that my coolant system is actually much cleaner now than when I started this job.

So... I understand the coolant in the oil... but doesn't the cam have a thrust plate to keep it in place?

Yes, it does have a thrust plate, that is why the damage sustained is somewhat minimal.

The thrust plate (which was also swapped with the Aerostar) did not allow my camshaft to be fully loose in place, the cam had maybe 1/8-1/5 inch of wiggle room with the camshaft bolt missing and the thrust plate still intact. If there had been no thrust plate, the camshaft would have been free to entirely disengage from its correct orientation and destroy all my lifters, destroy my distributor gear, ruin all the camshaft journal bearings, and almost certainly cause much further major engine damage.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Yeah... I don't think the cam gear bolt coming loose caused your lifters and retainers to self destruct. It just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[19Walt93]

Yeah... I don't think the cam gear bolt coming loose caused your lifters and retainers to self destruct. It just doesn't make sense to me.

The loose cam bolt let the cam move farther than the lifters could tolerate. Coolant/oil intermix is rough on bearings, too.

 

[Uncle Gump]

The loose cam bolt let the cam move farther than the lifters could tolerate. Coolant/oil intermix is rough on bearings, too.

I don't believe the cam gear bolt is what holds the cam in place. It's held in place with the thrust plate.

Maybe I'm wrong though...