Good morning, my friend has a 97 non VTEC with 360K. Car was well taken care of and pretty solid, but the camshaft snapped due to not enough oil getting to it. My friend has ordered a remanf head, but an engine rebuild guy told him this oil issue will not go away and the engine is pretty much junk. Is this guy correct? or is there something else that can be done for this engine that caused the crankshaft to fail due to no oil? No oil issues/lights to speak of. Need to know what to do when this new head arrives next week. Thanks.

 

You're mixing up crankshaft and camshaft but I assume the camshaft is the only real issue here (since you said you replaced the head). The oil pump may be failing (which would result in low oil pressure), so you may need a new oil pump. But I wouldn't jump to conclusions without testing oil pressure first since an oil pump is fairly labor intensive. This alone is not enough to junk an engine.

Keep in mind that low oil pressure can be caused by other things, such as worn crankshaft bearings. I would cross that bridge when you get there. Check your oil pressure first.

If your oil pump is good then the camshaft should be getting all of the lubrication it needs. Maybe if the crankshaft bearings were excessively worn it would reduce oil pressure so much that the cam would be starved (this is because of the way crankshaft bearings are designed. They use a special "sleeve" bearing that depends entirely on oil pressure instead of rollers like a ball bearing. If wear becomes excessive, they can have too much clearance and prevent pressure from building up). There's not much in between, just a couple passageways in the block and head.

 

Ok, thank you I will pass this along.

 

While I don't know about this, why not just get a junk yard engine? You can probably pick one with a lot lower miles up for $2-300.

 

If you want to pull a junkyard engine it's best to get one that has been in an accident, otherwise you won't know the reason for the car to be junked. If in an accident it's likely it got junked cause of the accident not cause of the engine.

 

Good morning, yes we are very familiar with junkyards, we are looking at a '97 with 175k on it, it has a bad trans, may check it out later today.

Have a good day!