I bought a stage 2 cam for my D16z6 a couple of months ago. I started out with a newly rebuilt head, installed the cam with a lot of lube and torque it with a calibrated torque wrench. When all the liquids was in the engine I pulled it around by hand and it felt and sounded good. Than I ran it on the starter before I installed the injectors and plugs. The car started immediately and I had pressure all the time.
I ran it in the garage two times so the engine got warm so I could get the air out of the cooling system.

I started the engine and drove it out of the garage and tested it on the road, never passing 4000rpm. The car hasn’t been tuned yet so I took it easy.
The car worked fine. I shut it of outside the garage and went to get my wallet because I needed gas.
The gas station is 3km from the garage. All the time I drove the car it sounded good and I had oil pressure. When I had 500m left the car broke. It felt like hitting the breaks.

We towed the car home and tried to pull it around by hand, it felt ok for a quarter of a lap than it stopped. I pulled of the valve cover and backed it by hand. The cam didn’t move but the cam gear did.
I dissembled everything and saw that the cam had seized on two of the overlaps. The cam gear broke and the pistons hit the valves.
I knew something was wrong so I go a machine shop to measure the cam and top on the pleases it didn’t seize. The cam was oversized!!! The clearance was 0,03mm-0,04mm minimum clearance is 0,05mm if you read WSM.
The car had ran in the beginning because of the lube I use when I installed it, but when that was gone the clearance was to tight so the oil didn’t get in as it should. The oil film became to small and that caused it to seize.

I contacted Crower hoping they would help me because I had all the facts and a machine shop with 30 years in the racing business had measured it for me.
This would be proof enough for most of the companies, but not Crower.
I got in hold of Dave Crower after weeks trying to e-mail them and get answers. Dave told me that this never happened before so I couldn’t happen.
Crower didn’t help me at all, Dave offered me good prices on new parts in the future, but that just felt like an insult at the moment.

I posted this at D-series and I wasn’t alone to get a oversized cam, has any one here the same experience?

 

Sorry for your lost.. But after OEM there is no guarantee sorry to say.. thats a risk you take putting parts on your car..
Dave is a dick.. Should have went with brian crower.. probably could have gotten a better piece anyway.

 

Thank you! I´m not asking about guarantee, they sent me a faulty product. That has nothing to do with guarantee.

If an other company sent you a part thats wrong, causing other parts to break, they will fix it for you. It´s one thing if I did something wrong causeing the engine to break, than I understand that Crower shouldn´t fix it.



Modified by erikr at 5:56 AM 6/18/2008

 

Who is Dave?

Edit: nvm he's the VP of Crower cams. Google is my friend. I only knew of Bruce and Brian.

 

If you read the Helms manual, you'll see that Honda recommends checking cam to head / cap clearance when installing their own cams.
At any rate, any time you "assume" anything when building an engine, you're leaving yourself open for a problem.

 

Unfortunately this falls under the category of YOUR mistake because you checked the clearance only AFTER the part was installed and subsequently broke.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ENDYN &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> any time you "assume" anything when building an engine, you're leaving yourself open for a problem.</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

If it turned over fine when you installed, your problem. If not you would have set it back. Installer error.

 

No it´s not my problem, Crower told me plug and play. They delivered a oversized cam, thats their fault, not mine.

 

It was a mistake that you did not catch until it was catastrophic. This is a racing engine piece , not a television.

 

I know what it is, but still Crower sent me a cam that wasen´t as promissed.

Have you had the same problem or not? That´s my question in this thread.

 

If Honda tells you to check clearances when using their stock cams, you'd better do the same with aftermarket cams. There are variances in the cam bores of the head, as well as the journals on the cams. Match a cam bore that's on the low-end of the scale with a cam journal that's on the high-end....and you end up with too little clearance.
"Plug and play" means piston to valve clearance doesn't need to be checked (if the block and head have never been milled). If Honda tells you to check bore to journal clearance with stock cams, and you install any cam (other than the one that came in the engine), you must check the clearance....or be willing to pay the price for taking it for granted.

 

No one say´s plug and play with rods....
The tolerance is so big on a cam, but of course I´ll never take it for granted again. I´ll never buy a product from Crower eighter!

 

They're valvetrain is outstanding, i woudln't trust anything else from them or crane.

 

All products are great as long as they are working. Crower had big problems with their valvetrain a couple of years ago.
And it was the same than, they didn´t help the guy. He bought the domain crowersuck.com, tan they helped him.

http://www.tamparacing.com/for....html

 

Nobody was talking about rods here. The previous issues with Crower cams for B series VTEC applications were stress-risers along side of the lobes, causing them to break.
The bottom line here is that you didn't check the clearances (like the Honda manual tells you to do), and you paid the price.
You have no one to blame except yourself, so stop the whining.


Modified by ENDYN at 4:05 PM 6/19/2008


Modified by ENDYN at 4:05 PM 6/19/2008

 

its a d16.. another new motor is like 300 bucks from hmotorsonline.com.

 

All respect to you ENDYN but you are dead wrong here!
A company should not send products that are wrong. I have e-mailed their support and they told me that it was plug and play. I they tell people that it´s their fault not the buyers.

But ofcourse if you scratch his back and he yours.....that´s the way it works in USA.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ENDYN &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">There are variances in the cam bores of the head, as well as the journals on the cams. Match a cam bore that's on the low-end of the scale with a cam journal that's on the high-end....and you end up with too little clearance.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

/thread

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by erikr &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">All respect to you ENDYN but you are dead wrong here!
A company should not send products that are wrong. I have e-mailed their support and they told me that it was plug and play.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Chock it up to a learning experience. I bet you won't ever put cams in again without checking clearances, whether Crower was at fault or not, you learned a lesson.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by erikr &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I dissembled everything and saw that the cam had seized on two of the overlaps.</TD></TR></TABLE>

What do you mean by overlaps?