VQ35 cam dowel, have you experience failures?
VQ35 cam dowel, have you experience failures?
I know there was a thread where a member made the same mistake as I made in that when installing the intake, and exhaust cam gears slightly got the tiny intake cam dowel offset on the dowel hole in the camshaft, and ended up tightening down the gears which elongated/ruined the dowel hole in the cam.
I've built many domestic engines over nearly 40 years now, and more than a few import engines [not many performance import engines vs domestic], and I was wondering if anyone of you guys who beat on these engines, ie road race, drag race, hard street driven, have ever experienced failure with these tiny dowels, outside of just getting them wrong on installation?
I used an old factory VQ35 intake cam end, and cut it off the cam, then took it to a machine shop where I had them turn down the inside to where the end would fit perfectly over a new camshaft end, to make a jig.
I used my jig to drill another slightly bigger hole in the cam, and gear to install a bigger, and longer dowel. With the longer dowel there is now no way to make the mistake of getting the dowel out of alignment [the factory dowel didn't stick out that much so you couldn't tell that it wasn't in the hole of the cam].
How about it, any of you guys running at high rpms [or just daily driving] have failures?
I've built many domestic engines over nearly 40 years now, and more than a few import engines [not many performance import engines vs domestic], and I was wondering if anyone of you guys who beat on these engines, ie road race, drag race, hard street driven, have ever experienced failure with these tiny dowels, outside of just getting them wrong on installation?
I used an old factory VQ35 intake cam end, and cut it off the cam, then took it to a machine shop where I had them turn down the inside to where the end would fit perfectly over a new camshaft end, to make a jig.
I used my jig to drill another slightly bigger hole in the cam, and gear to install a bigger, and longer dowel. With the longer dowel there is now no way to make the mistake of getting the dowel out of alignment [the factory dowel didn't stick out that much so you couldn't tell that it wasn't in the hole of the cam].
How about it, any of you guys running at high rpms [or just daily driving] have failures?
Hey, I'm the other guy who made that cam dowel mistake, and it did fail and rip the pin out of the cam pulley gear. The elongated hole slowly worked the cam pulley gear's dowel back and forth until it effectively fell out of the cam pulley gear... resulting in a massive timing failure. But I have yet to hear that happen to anyone without the error. Also of note, even with the play, mine lasted quite some time, roughly 18 months. With various trackdays and dyno sessions and relatively aggressive driving and tuning. My tuner thought it was odd how much timing it could take (likely due to the play in the intake cam) and also was impressed at the ultimate figures it put out. So, honestly if it lasted that long damaged, I can see why it doesn't fail often when put together correctly.
BTW, I had a 7800 rpm redline on mine.
BTW, I had a 7800 rpm redline on mine.
Last edited by Zazz93; Oct 5, 2018 at 02:57 PM.
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