Getting more oil to camshaft bearings? Cyl 5 & 6?

[Mike94531]

I was told that the bearings for the camshaft can be an issue for cylinders 5 and 6?

If so what is the remedy for this?

Anything else to do with the oil system while motor is out of vehicle?

[anders]

The cam only has four journals to be oiled. If there is an issue it would be with journals 1 and 4. Oil is supplied to the head via a passage around the cylinder head bolt between 3 and 4 on the injection pump side.
I personally have not seen any wear caused by insignificant oil supply to any of the cam journals. I would not worry about it.

One thing I would do is get the cylinder head freshened up/rebuilt if it has any more then 120,000 miles on it. I have seen exhaust valve guides worn in 90% of the heads I have done. It would be a good time to port and gasket match the head.

[745 TurboGreasel]

The only bad cams I've seen have been killed by timing belt crash.

[v8volvo]

I have only ever seen one head where there was a cam bearing issue. On that one the rearmost journal and bearing *were* pretty well whacked, but my suspicion is that that was an anomaly, caused by something that wasn't the head's fault, since the rest of the head and motor showed plenty of signs of abuse. I don't know the story of what happened to that motor before I saw it, so this is speculation.

It did gall pretty badly, but I consider this to be an exception, and I have never seen or heard a *documented* story of another one like it. I haven't ever seen anything that made me suspect an inherent flaw in the design of the oil supply system to the valvetrain. I think that myth probably originated from broken cams caused by balancer bolt loosening up, and then people assuming the breakage was caused by the cam seizing...

Remedy is to just drive it and not worry. Synthetic oil is a good idea too, but not for this reason. If you can spare some extra money and effort, head studs and a fresh radiator are good places to spend it.

[Mike94531]

Thanks for the input, think a pre-oil/lube setup is overkill?

[v8volvo]

My $.02 is that, if it were my own time and money, there are other things I would probably spend it on first before looking at pre-lubers, etc. However, if done right, it certainly won't hurt anything and might help -- so if you like the idea, I doubt you'll get too much discouragement here. Member jbadberg recently added a nice setup to his motor in this thread here: http://d24t.com/showthread.php?t=1175&page=2.

Me personally, I'd get the engine in the car and running the way it is first, and see what it does. If you find it has an oil pressure delay in the morning, like some of them do, and you're concerned about it, then adding on something to help it build pressure faster is something that can be done easily enough with the motor in the car, like the one above. However, if your motor already makes good quick oil pressure as-is, I think it's doubtful you'd see a return on your investment in terms of reducing long-term engine wear. The lube system is not really one of the typical trouble areas -- even when you take one apart with hundreds of thousands of miles on it, bearings typically look pretty good. Some of these motors last a long time, some of them don't, but almost always what kills them is something having to do with the cooling system, cylinder head, or timing belt. If none of those things happen and you keep synthetic oil in it, you can plan on driving it for a long time before any of the lubricated moving parts lets it down.

[jbadberg]

I im 100% with you. My engine set up is unique. I have home made
Mounts and i think it leans a little more than it should. When fill after an oil change i dump in 7 1/2 qrt Oil i show 1/2 qrt low on the dipstick if i park nose up hill and Its 10*f i idle 30 seconds before i would get presure some times

I fix other peoples stuff all week so i like to be proactive on my
Own stuff. And some times mabey a little too much

Sorry for beating this horse too much