philooo

Did anybody posted a DIY to replace the cam pads with the engine in the car ?

I would be curious to see how it can be done.

I removed my oil pan a while back for sanity check and I did found a couple of those plastic bits in there.

I'd love to know how my chain pads look like. But I think I need to have the cam tensioner and all that good stuff to remove the cover, right ?

If only I could have a glimpse to re-assure me I'd love to do it.

Macster

While the size of the debris look a little more like what I would expect after coming through the pump they still are on the larger side of what I would expect.

The oil pump gear teeth have just a few thousandths of an inch of clearance and this tends to pulverize (or for say alum. flatten out) anything that goes through the oil pump gear teeth.

But absent of any untoward behavior from the engine coupled with a cover your you know what follow up check of the oil filter housing oil and filter element after say a half an hour of run time -- provided this doesn't involve a road trip at high speed -- and if you find nothing scary the debris is probably nothing serious.

Sincerely,

Macster.

Macster

Unfortunately you probably found debris/trash that had been in the engine since befoe it left the factory.

New or rebuilt engines when first fired up and for sometime after shed debris.

The smaller stuff eventually goes through the oil pump which pulverizes the stuff and it ends up in the oil filter housing or oil filter element.

The larger pieces just end up laying at the bottom of the oil pan or on top of the oil sump cover plate.

Once in a great while a piece might be ingested by the pump so for someone paying close attention he will see a jump or increase in the stuff he finds in the oil filter housing oil and filter element.

Some of that debris shed willl be loose fragments of the various chain guiide/rail plastic material.

While I can't say for sure what your engine's cam chain guides/rails look like I had a chance to view the VarioCam actator rails which the exhaust to intake cam chain runs against and it was hardly worn. The tech said it looked just fine -- the actuator/solenoid was bad which is why this was out of the engine -- and advised me the other side didn't even need to be opened up let alone replaced.

This was after over 200K miles of running.

You can do what you want, what you think is best, but absent any signs of these actually deteriorating to the point it is affecting the engine's operation I think you should think about this some more.

Sincerely,

Macster.

philooo

my engine runs like a charm so I don't think I'll open it up anytime soon indeed.

The problem is that without opening again the oil pan. Because of what you said on the debris being pulverized by the oil pump, it is almost impossible to tell if something goes wrong in there as the only trace found in the oil filter should be looking like dust.

I am just glad I have my extended warranty to not worry too much about those things...

Imo000

The pices have to be pretty small to pass through the oil pump pick up screen. Anything larger than about 1 square milimeter will get stuck in the pickup mesh screen. The ONLY way to know for sure is to pull the valve cover, anything less is just a guess.

San Rensho

It doesn't look bad to me. I've gotten that much debris on a couple of oil changes but I found that if I change the oil around 3k miles, I get little to no debris.

Macster

Pulling the camshaft cover is expensive. And there are two of them.

Besides I believe only the VarioCam guides/rails and only the top one is visible.

The guides/rails along the long run of chain down to the IMS are not visble.

Neither is the guide/rail along side the crankshaft to IMS.

Sometimes one has to go this far but it is best to be as sure as one can be that it is necessary.

Sincerely,

Macster.

Imo000

Yes and no. Only some of the vario pads are visible but with some creative missor or scope use, you can look at some of the other ones. However you are ringht that if you want to see all of them, the case has to be split. Ignoring it it worse then not pulling the valve. Maybe it's time to learn how to turn a wrench and dig in. These cars are getting old enough that things like these chain pads will become a common service item.