Uncle Tony says Gen III hemi has inherent lifter lubrication problems. Agree?

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toolmanmike said:
I wonder how many issues the police/patrol cars have. They may sit and idle for hours at a accident or emergency.
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Oops, I backread a bit and you guys were already talking about cop cars. Pardon me.
 
408 swinger said:
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As promised. The lifter off of this lobe is fine. I'm not really disagreeing with Tony. If you take enough of these apart, you'll see a lot of scuffing of pushrod and valve tips. You'll also see exactly what he talks about on the lifter bodies. I wonder, with enough low pressure and idling, that heat builds between roller wheel and lobe. Thus, starting to "peel" up the surface. Kinda like taking a torch to mill scale on flat bar. The rest is history. But, as I said earlier, the wheel on this lifter was not damaged. IDK.
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Is that a cast cam or forged? Are the cast cams the issue and not the forged?
 
What really upsets me the most is when cars were $3000 we didn't have engine problems. I had a 58 Fury with the first year of the b motors, a 350 with 2 four barrels and accumulated over 150,000 miles on it without a problem. These $35,000 to $50,000 trucks with these engines have so many problems. The timing chain was a nightmare because the first few fixes didn't work. Now we hear valve seats dropping, camshafts wearing and roller lifters failing. Unfortunately this is why Detroit has failed us and the Japanese took over the Auto industry. Detroit didn't know Quality until the Japanese showed America they way to build cars. I bought a new 80 Honda Civic and stopped using it when I hit 205,000 miles, because I never had to replace anything, I was afraid everything would go all at once.
 
Johnson Lifter has a better lifter that solves most if the issues. Heavy oil is the other enemy. MDS doesn't help.
 
Is there a "magical year" that gets a guy past all the cam/lifter issues?
 
67Dart273 said:
I remember ..........back in the day.........quite a few flat cams in Chivvies.
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And Pontiacs. Worn out tooling drilled the cam tunnels at an angle.

Saw a reputable race engine builder rifle thru GM blocks looking for the tell tale signs of bad blocks. This was 1970s before aftermarket blocks. He showed me what to look for.
 
Here's a thought... is it possible the issue isn't from idling, but rather from over revving? People lie about how they drive their cars when warranties are at risk. Mr. Walsh stated that there was microscopic evidence of "skidding" and "plastic deformation" on the lobe surface. Then later he points out the low spring pressure. Seems to me, that might lead to a condition where the lobes are "beaten" at high revs. This would account for the fact that the SRT motors don't have the problem. Better cam yes, but also better springs, possibly eliminating the "pounding" effect. A roller tip should never cause plastic deformation as far as i can reason, unless it's beating the cam lobe. Hard enough hit, and the oil is squished out (lack of stiction as he calls it), leaving the roller to "actually" roll on the surface of the lobe, which it's not really supposed to do.

Again, it's just thoughts, I don't claim to be an expert at all. The problem with what I'm suggesting off the bat is he found that damage on the lift side of the ramp. Still though, if there wasn't a lubrication problem, then the parts would not show galling since everything would be separated by a molecular layer of oil.

I for one think he's on to something. It makes sense.
 
The SRT engines dont have the issue because I believe it was pointed out they have a different camshaft. They still have the same oiling design, the same fifter bore angle ect. Do none of you guys find it odd that a brand new, obviously CNC machined camshaft is only $80 from Chrysler? I am going to say no more in this thread, because no one seems to get it. Its DELAMINATION of a inferior casting.....if yall want to believe otherwise, be my guest...I have a shop to run. Maybe yall can go watch a unemployed guy who sells used parts, and get more technical edu-mucated
 
replicaracer43 said:
Interesting that he claims that's its NOT a lubricating problem as far as volume, but a problem with the amount of "stiction" of the oil. Very interesting. Of all the 5.7s I have replaced in my shop, ALL of them had delamination, and zero appearance of a lack of oil.
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Just curious, what is the average cost one could expect to pay on a cam/lifter replacement in a shop??? Not asking for your exact quotes, but ball park.... thanks
 
This is a very interesting thread.
There is lots of input by people who have either worked on the cars over several years ''in the trenches'' and we have a lot of valid points, including Tony's.
To summarize the findings that I have read so far, the camshafts are weak in the engines other than the SRT engines that had cams made out of a better material as well as the valve springs and lifters.
So, a fix would be to adopt the ''good'' parts from the SRTs or aftermarket.
However, the SRT or performance cars aren't generally idled for long periods of time, but the good metallurgy would make up for it if they were?
Honestly, I think that Tony is on to something with the minimal oiling of these engines by design to start with.
That is the REAL problem, and it needs to be addressed.
It is a definite design flaw from the start, the rest are band aid solutions...........
 
And do the Charger squad cars come with a SRT engine instead of the pick-up 5.7?
 
replicaracer43 said:
The SRT engines dont have the issue because I believe it was pointed out they have a different camshaft. They still have the same oiling design, the same fifter bore angle ect. Do none of you guys find it odd that a brand new, obviously CNC machined camshaft is only $80 from Chrysler? I am going to say no more in this thread, because no one seems to get it. Its DELAMINATION of a inferior casting.....if yall want to believe otherwise, be my guest...I have a shop to run. Maybe yall can go watch a unemployed guy who sells used parts, and get more technical edu-mucated
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You seem awfully upset about this, not sure why.

I also stated the SRT cam was better, but offered an alternate possibility as to the reason for the accelerated failure for "some" non-srt cams. If I missed something and somewhere someone said "all" cams from certain years fail, well then so be it. That still doesn't account for the fact that only one part of the equation is completely constant and that's the design of the block and oiling. The cam/lifter material will NOT (likely) be consistent for a span of years. Something would change.

I don't think anyone is arguing against the cams failing, but other than your visual inspection, you offer no other explanation other than "it's a crappy" casting... I find it hard to believe the Chrysler (Daimler) engineers wouldn't be able to figure that out and have it fixed. I supose I could be wrong, but correcting an alloy for the casting would be a helluva lot cheaper the warranty work. I also find it hard to take anyone serious who doesn't offer up a real explanation and they gets upset when people don't just say "Okie doke...". Clearly enough people aren't satisfied with that mode of thought, not just me...

In the end, I'm not arguing. You build engines it seems for a living, or something... I don't. Best of luck to you. Maybe you're right, maybe not. I suspect this, or your post, won't end the conversation about the cams failing though.

Cheers.
 
Ironically, all of the bad cams I've dealt have been in trucks. One in particular(my dad's), I can say for sure has a lot of low RPM use. He does a lot of in town crusing.
 
Cuda416 said:
You seem awfully upset about this, not sure why.

I also stated the SRT cam was better, but offered an alternate possibility as to the reason for the accelerated failure for "some" non-srt cams. If I missed something and somewhere someone said "all" cams from certain years fail, well then so be it. That still doesn't account for the fact that only one part of the equation is completely constant and that's the design of the block and oiling. The cam/lifter material will NOT (likely) be consistent for a span of years. Something would change.

I don't think anyone is arguing against the cams failing, but other than your visual inspection, you offer no other explanation other than "it's a crappy" casting... I find it hard to believe the Chrysler (Daimler) engineers wouldn't be able to figure that out and have it fixed. I supose I could be wrong, but correcting an alloy for the casting would be a helluva lot cheaper the warranty work. I also find it hard to take anyone serious who doesn't offer up a real explanation and they gets upset when people don't just say "Okie doke...". Clearly enough people aren't satisfied with that mode of thought, not just me...

In the end, I'm not arguing. You build engines it seems for a living, or something... I don't. Best of luck to you. Maybe you're right, maybe not. I suspect this, or your post, won't end the conversation about the cams failing though.

Cheers.
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Lol...actually, I'm not the least bit upset. I do have lots of experience, I have laid out why this happens, and why the youtube vid is incorrect. I just see no point to continue in this thread when nobody believes my input. Go back and read everything I have posted. But some guy with a internet channel is now some type of technical authority on 5.7 hemis... the same guy that said in the same thread he hasnt ever seen "soft" cams... (AKA early 80s gm 4 cylinders come to mind....) common problem and certainly not "unheard of" Good topic, I've just said all I can! Cheers!
 
Krooser said:
Maybe '09....
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My '09 2500 with no MDS ate the cam at 120k. Put in the Johnson lifters and a $40 cam from a Melling box that had a Mopar pentastar etched on it. No more problems to almost 300k when I sold it...
 
tonysrt said:
What really upsets me the most is when cars were $3000 we didn't have engine problems. I had a 58 Fury with the first year of the b motors, a 350 with 2 four barrels and accumulated over 150,000 miles on it without a problem. These $35,000 to $50,000 trucks with these engines have so many problems. The timing chain was a nightmare because the first few fixes didn't work. Now we hear valve seats dropping, camshafts wearing and roller lifters failing. Unfortunately this is why Detroit has failed us and the Japanese took over the Auto industry. Detroit didn't know Quality until the Japanese showed America they way to build cars. I bought a new 80 Honda Civic and stopped using it when I hit 205,000 miles, because I never had to replace anything, I was afraid everything would go all at once.
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I know, right? Plus add to that if we had the oil technology back then that we do now, a lot of those engines would still be running. The oil technology, IMO is one big thing that helped engines well eclipse the 100K mile "and done" thing.
 
Bill Crowell said:
Slopar72, I also find Tony to be irritating sometimes. For example, he seems to feel that he needs to post a new youtube video every day. I guess that's how he makes a substantial part of his income. Unfortunately when you feel you've got to upload a video every day, the quality inevitably suffers.

Also, I wonder why the guy doesn't realize he is killing himself with his chain smoking. Once he said he was going to quit, and that it was going to be easy. Apparently he had never tried quitting smoking before*. He quit for about a day, at the most, before he was back to puffing the cancer sticks.

However, Tony does have a lot of experience with Mopars, and he is definitely smarter than I am about them, so I'd better not badmouth him too much. I do learn things from his videos.

*As noted youtube car guy Jonathan Winans (Jonathan W) has remarked, even though he did successfully quit smoking a couple of years ago, he still craves cigarettes every day. Nicotine is incredibly addictive.
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It's hard to be self aware all the the time.
It's hard to know wether or not you sound like blowhard blabber mouth who thinks he's figured it all out...
It's hard to remember that every week someone is recycling and reinventing the wheel on a chat site, social forum or youtube.

It's hard not saying 'WTF , where has everyone been?!' 'This is new to you??' 'You mean you didnt know that?!'

Like a 20 something yr old coming up and showing me how to open a beer bottle with a lighter... and that "people are so in wow over it". Muthr fkr , I've done that before you even knew how to walk or use youtube... so then I take the first swig from my long neck.... then smack my palm down onto the opening and blow the bottom out the bottle in a perfect circle right before bringing to his face and telling him..'this is a little trick the sailors would do to scoop eye balls out in a bar fight..'.... i get'em everytime with that one. Their face goes white and they've hardly a voice to talk..
 
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