well I was doing a short run and threw it into third and missed a shift and all of a sudden clunk, clank, put put, stall. As I coasted into the nearest pasrking lot I didnt know what to expect. I thought I had blew my b20 up again. Then out of the cornwer of my eye I noticed that the exhaust cam gear was sticking out farther then the intake then ita accured to me that I had snapped my cam or something else funky happened but the only thing that would explain it is a broken cam.

the weird part about it was I had this starnge dream last night that my cam caps came loose and fucked my cylinder head all up.

do you think I should contact crower about my cams???or do you think they will say screw you.

my biggest fear is that my pistons are fucked up. and if they are am pushing the car into the river with me in it.


Modified by turbociv at 2:28 AM 10/22/2003

 

what cams were they? i had just talked to them about that bout 2 weeks ago and they said they had a flaw bout a year ago or so. so supposively all of their products within the past year should have flawless. what were ur rpms @ when the cam took a ****? ur more than likely gonna have damage though. alot of us has been there. about a year ago i kissed valves to pistons cause i wasnt educated of b20 vtecs it was a total loss. coupl cracked sleeves, i was like cool ill put some dartons in but the valve penitrated the block and the head was a done deal. but good luck with the results. keep posted

 

well just took off the valve cover and saw my exhaust cam snapped in 2 spots. I missed shift and bounced at around 9500rpm. I looked inside each spark plug hole and didnt see any metal laying around or anything like that but we shall see. I purchased the cams earlier this year and have around 4000mi on them. soo who knows what the hell happened and I will be contacting crower about this to see what they have to say about there product. I did cut the valve reliefs in the block ALOT so I know I was safe as far as piston to valve clearance goes but we shall see when the head comes off some time next week.

 

ur valve relief may be safe but cam breaking is simular to breaking a timing belt.
the piston could have turned a couple more times while the valve was in the open position due to the dead cam.

 

yes, I am aware of that but I am trying not to beleive that I blew up 2 motors in the last month. I am keepingmy fingers crossed but you are probably right. And they where the 403's crowers.

 

whoa blew two motors before this...take it easy hot shot...speedy gonzalas

 

it was one motor before this and it was because of a wrist pin. but thats a whole nother story.

 

i feel you all you can do is hope for the best. lookin at the truth and reallity the block can be safe or saved cause usually pistons gets damaged and posibly a sleeve (s) but for ur block just ge, darton sleeve it. and whatever piston (s) got damaged. im not sayin for sure ur engine got damaged but u were UP in the rpms rite? ok say the piston and valve collision didnt break the valve (just bent it) then u really might be safe because if the valve isnt bouncing around in cylinder, then what would **** the sleeve up? so if u think about it if none of ur valves broke, you might be good to with the exception of a couple valves, pistons, and **** those crower 403s. keep me posted bro

 

before I new the cam snapped I tried starting the engine to listen and it just sounded like a engine without spark or compression. I imagine If there were dropped valves or peices I would of heard something besides empty sounding cranks. I imagine I would of heard some banging around or something. Later today I will pull the head off if the weather holds up.

 

had almost the same thing happen to me once... all happened bc my timing belt broke tho... my skunk2 intake cam broke in two pieces. didnt know what happened at first and i tryed to start the car like you said you did and it made the same noise. pulled the head off and everything and all my valves were bent and have two valve guides cracked but no damage to the bottom end at all.

my guess is you have bent valves maybe some cracked valve guides.... most likely no block damage but you never know until you pull that head off... just my opinion

 

it would be helpful if you gave more info

:Valvesprings
:Who installed the cams and how
:LMA's used

 

the valve springs and retainers where skunks, and the LMA's are gsr because its a gsr head. I installed the cams and yes I installed them correctly. I always release the tension on the valves before I install and then do a valve adjustment. When the cams were first purchased I plastiguaged the the cam caps with cams to make sure clearances. Dont know what happened.

 

Props for admitting to missing a shift and overrevving, I suspect alot of people leave that info out when they report these problems. It's entirely possible that the cam snapped as a result of coil bind when your RPMs soared. If that's the case then it's not impossible to believe the exhaust valves snapped shut imediately and saved them from most of the damage. The intake side may well have been less fortunate assuming the timing belt stopped spinning the intake cam after it lost tension from the exhaust cam breaking. If you turned the engine since and didn't hear anything clunking around you probably don't have any broken valves. The damage may be isolated to the head.

On a side note I don't think you should jump on tweakmeister for asking which LMAs you had. He rightly didn't automatically conclude you had GSR LMAs simply because you had a GSR head. Many people, myself included, have swapped LMAs to ITRs in their GSR heads, because it's easy, reasonably inexpensive, and MAY provide further protection against just this kind of calamity.

Good luck when you take the head off bro, and keep us posted on how Crower responds. It doesn't really sound as though the cams were at fault, but it'd be nice if they replaced it just the same.

 

according to omniman (I believe it was him) the gsr lma's and the itr lma's are identicle in shape size and load. tommorrow I will talk to crower and hopefully get the head off. I dont think they will do anything but we shall see. when the cam broke the tension wasnt lost, just the gear was sticking out towards the driver fenderwall about a 1/4 in more than the intake. right then and there I realized it was the cam. I then took off the valve cover and discovered it was cracked in two spots.

 

crower cams are known for breaking.
welcome to crower and their low quality sport compact car cams.
if you get replacements, sell them and buy Jun, Toda, Skunk, or EF1


Modified by Dave99rt at 10:04 PM 9/28/2003

 

I don't buy that Crower makes garbage cams and that's why they break. I think more people buy them because they're reasonably priced unlike certain other companies, therefore naturally there are more reports of problems. All cams break under the right conditions.

ITR LMAs have more travel. There's enough of a difference to be noted in a side by side comparison.

 

I have the 403's in my 2.2 b20. They are great. I bought a set off ebay then sent them to Brian Crower he said the were early model cams and sent me the new ones.

Where is you rev limiter set to. I dont rev past 8300k but I ride on that sometimes b/c I auto this car only.

 

I doubt crower will cover it since there was a mis-match in valvetrain.
The spring/retainer combo might have been fine, but not following Crowers instructions to use matched components will leave you at fault in Crowers eyes.

It sucks.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Benny Hinn &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I doubt crower will cover it since there was a mis-match in valvetrain.
The spring/retainer combo might have been fine, but not following Crowers instructions to use matched components will leave you at fault in Crowers eyes.

It sucks.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I doubt that's a Crower specific policy, but it's not dificult to see from their perspective if they didn't test their cams w/ skunk2 springs & retainers. Anone know the difference in spring rates & retainer weights offhand?

 

you probably floated a valve on the exhaust side, it probably smacked the piston.
something had to give.
check for bent valves on the exhaust side when you take the head off (which you should do).
either way, the valve(s) are probably not worth using.
they have a tendency to develop cracks at the stem when they hit a piston.

 

If you've narrowed down your choices, I'm one to look a little beyond the usual on cases like these.

While it probably was the overrev, I'm a stickler on how cams are handled outside the car. This is why I endorse EF-1 in particular (they ship in wooden boxes).

Cams can be susceptible to "micro" or "hairline" cracking, especially during the shipment process. This could be the case, and there's really no way to know.

 

"Cams can be susceptible to "micro" or "hairline" cracking, especially during the shipment process. This could be the case, and there's really no way to know."

or possibly a flaw in the casting, since crower uses cast cores, whereas Toda, Jun, etc use billet cores.

go to google and type in crower cam breaking.
it's a known fact they have had problems before with them breaking.
it's not an isolated incident.

even though i still think he floated a valve.

 

Yeah I know. I did all the research prior to buying my own 63403s, which incidently I've been running for 2 years. I spoke to Brian himself as well as several other lackeys at Crower. They admitted they had a problem with the first batch, but corrected them shortly thereafter. I know Skunk2 also had a problem w/ early cams, and if you do a search right here I think you can find photos of Jun & Toda cams broken as well. I'm not here to stick up for Crower, people think what they think, but I think there's a certain mindless "pile on" mentality when even a rumor of a manufacturing defect is uttered. Even people that have never even seen a Crower cam will swear they're garbage.

 

Crower cams just straight suck ***. They make great power but there cores suck!!

 

&lt;yawn&gt; If you say so.