JFCIII

I decided to fix my oil leak which appears to be from the drain back port of the distributor drive on the L/S head. While looking around I found cracks in both of the cam gears.

I guess my questions are.

Is this common?

What is the cause, if known?

Where do I go from here?

The pic shows the L/S But the right is the same.

Thanks for your input.

davek9

What condition is the gear face please?
Can not tell from the pic.

JFCIII

That's a good question I will check tomorrow.

I haven't pulled the belt yet.

Giovanni

ouch, I saw that. That looks very freightening. I personally would change that before the next Start but lets see what he pros has to say.

davek9

I am in the middle of doing a tbwp job, now I need to look more closly at mine..

IcemanG17

I also vote for instant repair.......its hard to tell from the photo, but the gear does look pretty worn too

PorKen

Both gears? Weird. Was the car ever hit in the front?

Perfect time to upgrade to 32V gears?

RyanPerrella

obviously you should replace them with new ones.

I am curious as to how they cracked though. I havent heard of that before. And youve got 2 hat are cracked.

Would love to hear thoeries on how this happened

Bill Ball

Can't recall any previous reports here. A number of cracked cam noses, cracked cam spiders, but not the gears. Wonder if it was overtorqued. Should be 47 ft-lbs. See how much it is when you replace it.

bd0nalds0n

I had a cracked cam spider that led to a complete cam failure. I would replace both the cam gears and spiders immediately before restarting the car, no matter what else anyone told me.

borland

https://rennlist.com/forums/showthre...t=cam+sprocket

JFCIII

I don't believe that the car was ever hit. I don't see any other damage.

The Cracks don't look like the open up nor do they look fresh.
I put about 100 miles on it on Sunday and the only reason why I went digging is because my air pump bearing went bad.


Tell me more about the 32v gear update.

What is the purpose, benefit and cost?

Jim R.

+1 on that. Change those spiders--if the gear is cracked, they are probably damaged, even if not cracked themselves.

Jim

H2

Bill,

Is repairing a cracked cam nose possible? I've not heard of this potential problem before.

Harvey

Giovanni

if you are going to replace them, do us a favour. Tab it lightly with a hammer and post the pic or maybe the video when it breaks. I don't think it needs much force to break those cam gears.