So I pulled off my valve cover the other day to find this greeting me. Intake cam looks fine, the only weird stuff is on the exhaust cam.
The wear is similar on all 4 exh. VTEC lobes.

Crower 2-A cams
Brian Crower S&R
Stock 2001 H22A4.

I'd love to hear some thoughts about what's going on with this, it can't be normal.
Speculation as to what the rocker arms would look like if I pulled the cams would also be neat.



















Thanks for looking.

 

out of curiosity what motor oil were you running?

 

H22 do this a lot, I have no long term results yet but I think "real" motor oil will be key to preventing this.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Eddiebx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">out of curiosity what motor oil were you running?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Cams are *about* 17000km old.

First 9000 or so, M1 10W30
For a few thousand K in the middle M1 10W30 + 1 bottle of blue STP...after I read Rocket's oil threads.
For the last few thousand K Amsoil 5W30. Not API SM certified.


I just don't understand why they are grooved so sharply and in the location that they are. Although you can see some wear in other places...

 

Looks normal, rub your hand on it, if its a deep feel or actually cut into the material, i'd be worried, if its not even a shaved feeling dont stress.. I have some minor marks on my s2s2's i began to think its because the crower full race valvetrain was "too" hard of a spring setup but i believe its normal wear and tear.

Rub your fingers on them, do you feel the grooves or pieces cut in? If not , dont worry.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by IntegraType-R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Rub your fingers on them, do you feel the grooves or pieces cut in? If not , dont worry.</TD></TR></TABLE>

That is not normal or acceptable, the cam and rockers are shot.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Runnerdown &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

That is not normal or acceptable, the cam and rockers are shot.</TD></TR></TABLE>
First , we dont know if its just on the outside, or if its actually digging into the cam.. we need to "Feel" before any conclusions are made..in one of those pics its seems a CHUNK is missing, i dont know if thats oil or not, if it is.. someone didn't torque something down right? possible valvelash too tight, something is wrong.

 

look at that. You made an obvious non-thinking post and people didnt jump down your throat and call you a "f'ing moron".

It is not normal whatsoever. I had the same problem with the crowers.




initially started with M1 5w30 extended performance then moved to 0w30 amsoil. 1500 miles.

Think for a second. If the cams are scraped up and flattened, the rockers are going to be scraped up. regardless, there is a problem here.

 

I suspect alot of the cam wear we see on this site is due to the fact that people do not replace the rocker arms when they install new cams.

 

so why doesnt this happen more often if that would be the case?

and why only the vtec exhaust rocker?

 

The rocker arms are 2001 vintage. I don't think they are worn out.

I think the problem is with the crower springs. I think they have to much set pressure.

 

wasn't somthing about the valve seals not being fully installed part of the problem?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mar778c &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The rocker arms are 2001 vintage. I don't think they are worn out.

I think the problem is with the crower springs. I think they have to much set pressure.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

i was running eibach springs and crower retainers

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by alterdcreations &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

wasn't somthing about the valve seals not being fully installed part of the problem?
</TD></TR></TABLE>

robert believed so, but I could not get the valve seals to seat any further.

 

I've had this happen several times after swapping over to new, stiffer springs. No coil bind, valve seal contact or unusual lash settings.

 

Just to feed in some more information, for what it's worth...

Motor was never spun that high, not past 8200RPM. Cams were installed with a little over 90,000km on the ticker.

Valve lash was pretty decent. I checked it at the end of last summer (because the motor has been VERY ticky since the cams were installed) and it was fine.
Just the other day I had to tighten up a couple of exhaust valves but nothing was looser than .009". Most of them were still about .008".

Retainer/valve guide doesn't seem like it would cause those grooves when the cam is far from peak lift, although I guess that's the question I'm posing.


I guess the real question is what to do now. Can I be pretty certain that if I pulled the cam the rockers would also be junk? While I have a small pile of OEM H22 cams and a head lying around to steal rockers from I'd be pretty damn concerned about this happening again. Especially with what you're saying, Runnerdown. (although I've certainly heard of this happening before, thus the thread title).
Plus swapping rockers is getting into the serious PITA category for me.


Oh, and to copy over from the Brian Crower website the specs of the springs and retainers that are in there:
BC1030 Seat: 1.460" @ 88 lbs / Open: 0.950" @ 220 lbs / Coil Bind: 0.790" (no machine work required)



Modified by A Blue Lude at 10:28 PM 5/4/2008

 

The hardness of the pads on H22 rockers is several points down from those on the B series, which is one reason we're in the process of reproducing the H22 rockers (with harder pads).
As some may not want to recall, we've had a little experience with this in the past and until the new rockers are available, we've resorted to: coatings on the H22 rocker pads, plumbing more oil to the top of the engine with an external oil line, and the use of an oil additive that's friendlier to sliding parts.
You can find excessive rocker wear on stock H22's (running stock valve springs), and running more spring pressure (than stock) excellerates the wear problem.

 

untill you come out with the revised rockers....what coatings can be used to save the rockers from damange?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ENDYN &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">The hardness of the pads on H22 rockers is several points down from those on the B series, which is one reason we're in the process of reproducing the H22 rockers (with harder pads).
As some may not want to recall, we've had a little experience with this in the past and until the new rockers are available, we've resorted to: coatings on the H22 rocker pads, plumbing more oil to the top of the engine with an external oil line, and the use of an oil additive that's friendlier to sliding parts.
You can find excessive rocker wear on stock H22's (running stock valve springs), and running more spring pressure (than stock) excellerates the wear problem. </TD></TR></TABLE>

That awesome. I had read about some people doing a cryo treatment to "harden" the rockers but i havent looked into how much that costs.

Where did you plumb the new oil line to and from?

 

the plumbing is just like the ls-vtec oil line...from an oil filter adaptor plate to a main flow line to the head

i want to look into these revised rockers myself for my build...

 

Cryo is a complete waste of time and money. We've used Casidium coatings on new rockers (running new cam lobes) with great success.
The oil line plumbs to the head just like an LS/VTEC combination. The additional oil keeps the valvetrain happy. We even plumb the heads on all the B series VTEC engines we build. We've found that the additional oil makes springs (as well as cams and rockers) last a lot longer with extreme loading.

 

what is your opinion on doing the coating on used rockers that are currently being used without a problem?

I'm glad this topic was brought up. I wouldnt even put the stiffer valvesprings on the extra head i had because i was worried about something going wrong and i dont have the money to keep replacing heads.

 

so wats a manufacture that offeres this rocker coating?

 

There are a number of companies that offer casidium (PVD) coatings. They aren't inexpensive, but then neither are new rocker arms from Honda.
If you're running cams with more lift and duration than stockers, you have to increase spring rates to control the valvetrain. Remember, the valvetrain mass on the H22 is considerably higher than the B series due primarily to the larger valve sizes.
If you can't afford the coatings, plumb the oil line to the head, and put some zink additive in the oil.
I'm hoping our harder-pad rockers will be available in two - three months. They'll be only a fraction of the price of new Honda rockers and that should take a lot of the sting out of fixing H22 valvetrains for good.

 

good to hear T.O.O.

I'll be waiting patiently

 

I just recently had the exact same thing happen on my GSR. Strange thing is I have NEVER had this issue before. I've done tons of cam swaps on my engines and others without issue.