cam bearing install.

[JCunningham]

can it be done in the car or does the motor have to come out. I have to remove my cam due to Comp cams inability to polish a cam shaft so it wines.
If I nick a bearing does the motor have to come out. thanks

[vroomapunk]

Dude that sucks!!

Is it running good otherwise?

[Dimitrim]

It can be replaced in place.

[Synner]

There is no reason you should nick a bearing if you take your time.

[anthony martinez]

I was never able to install cam bearings in the car on a fully assembled lower end...

[Matt_ZL1]

Replacing the bearings with the engine in place and lower end assembled could be done with the appropriate tooling but it would be a little sketchy.

[JCunningham]

Well it looks like no ones had any problems with the whine can so I'll leave it alone

[anthony martinez]

I would love to see cam bearings installed with the complete lower end installed. I will put money on it that it could not be done. I have built many engines and I have not seen any that I could install other than the very front....

[JCunningham]

So if I have to install bearings the motor would have to be completely disassembled. because the crank will have to come out. That means resizing the rods, new rod bearings, new rod bolts, new crank bearings, new cam bearings, new cam, new head gaskets and new head bolts. Correct. i dont have a bore gauge or a bolt stretch gauge or a micrometer. so I would have to have a shop do it. i can break it down to a short block but its just not worth it to take the chance.

[1fast]

Originally Posted by JCunningham

So if I have to install bearings the motor would have to be completely disassembled. because the crank will have to come out. That means resizing the rods, new rod bearings, new rod bolts, new crank bearings, new cam bearings, new cam, new head gaskets and new head bolts. Correct. i dont have a bore gauge or a bolt stretch gauge or a micrometer. so I would have to have a shop do it. i can break it down to a short block but its just not worth it to take the chance.

Ok your just talking about Cam bearings ? You do not have to tear down engine but you do have to pull it to do cam bearings. Cam bearings are sized differant on the bore.

From front of motor cam bearings let say from front to rear go 1.2.3 then 2.1 on size of cam bearing, so with engine out of car you acually use cam tool from front of engine slide cam tool to last bearing or rear engine remove bearing then come back to second from rear and knock out,

turn block around and from rear of engine go to front bearing knock out bearing then the second and third. Then to install pretty much reverse process from rear of engine you put in the number to bearing first then number one.

turn block around and from front put bearing number 3 in then 2 then 1 maiking sure you align your oil passage to the correct hole which should be clocked in the 4 and 7 position verify before removing old bearing.

Keep in mind this is using the correct cam removal tools and rods that you slide in the from holes to keep lifters up and in place during this process if not lifters will fall out and you will be tearing down engine at this point.

Other wise you dont have to tear down to put cam bearings in

[christianchevell]

I have read your other posts on the cam, and though people may trash me for having been and being smart enough to use driven racing oil I am at thousands of miles on my TSP .639/.623 cam with 112 lsa that has 235/239 duration that netted me 491 rwhp 448 torque on a mustang dyno with a good h.p. tune and just the cam , SP headers with cats and CAI, sure I have dual mode and electric power steering but I have never read other cams matching this power level on here with just these basic mods and a tune...yes I limited my torque management and upped the idle to 900 and the air fuel levels to never go lean.

I did my research well, and being a old hot rodder who installed lots of cams and everything else in my SBC cars I built and sold for decades.... 1. I never had a bad cam,( though back in the day metal came from America, the cores were not most likely repurposed melted down American steel smelted in China which it appears is doing a lot of core making for probably about every cam maker and if they have colder spots in there ovens hardening them incorrectly who knows). To say that you got a bad cam is a real possibility as I have read the whining cam complaints in the past of other posts, and micro polishing is a good place to look, but so are other things.
I am sorry you have had trouble you appear to be one of the real good dudes on here. I have been kicked a couple times on here because I do not always go with the crowd. Once for telling someone young who lived at home with mom and dad to not get a Camaro to track as they already had a track car a little Miata and they wanted to drive it to death doing 100 mile commutes everyday and go twisty turny on it too.... As I have my perspective and joined the Infantry to serve my country when I was young and did not stay at home, I had worked after school since way young...12..
And once for telling someone the truth as I saw it for being "famous" for advertising a shop doing a "muffler delete" the mod most unpopular on here from polls and frankly not so legal....
Having installed lots of cams even used cams.... the problem with our cams is the size...small base circles, large cam lobes, special tools required for just to unhook lines etc.. degreeing etc.. The cams even on a small block chevy with larger bases and smaller lobes ,(comparatively), would hang up and some times you had to back them out and start over and that was with the lifters not even in the valley..... Scoring the bearings a little form having to do a couple tries was not so much a worry as they had their oil hole and would not turn in the alignment from just scraping them a little and they are just a round piece of metal mainly and the cam has all the other bearings to keep it supported well. I do not know how bad you got it stuck or had to dink with it and yes the bolts on the end help to keep the cam up as its hard to guide in a cam that wants to dive on the end with lobes that want to hit the bearings, but the thing is patience is a real virtue when installing it as it does not always happen easy breasy and using marks on the end of the cam helps, and lube too of course and the bolts right at the very end of the install as the farther you go in the harder it seems not to hang up.
Cam bearings always were like to fit 1.868 journals on standard old chevys with larger on bbc like 1.969 or something and we have journals that are 2.165 (55 mm)or something like that as our cams are large and even so more our the lobes and so its a heavy cam. I do not know as the last guy said if the cam bearings are different sizes that seems strange to me.....? And new cam bearings on a regular old engine could be done without tearing the crank and con rods etc out....but yes the engine would have to come out.
And others can say what they will....... I will continue to use my Driven racing ls30 and if my engine needed further protection its covered. My builder Wong at wongs performance engineering in Vancouver has a website you may want to talk to him. He is a electrical engineer who got into hotrodding vettes and chevys and is the guru I could find. If I were you I would take the cam out carefully then inspect with a remote camera the cam bearings to see if its all that bad.... And most likely trash the lifters because they may be trashed if the cam is going south it takes them with it unless you are very lucky and did hardly anything with it..or used like some great oil...like say..oh a driven product as in br30 for breaking in a hydraulic roller cam...in a ls3. And well, My builder always dumps the oil after installing a new cam and dyno tuning thus it has been a break in period for cars new cams even though he may not look at it like that, it has in effect cleaned out the oil....... And joe gibbs racing had a 1in10 cam failure rate go to 1in40 due to doing break in with driven...... of course what do those nascar guys know anyway?

I plan on running my cam 25k until I check the springs for replacement if needed and hope my ls30 makes them stay better longer because I have read the testimonials, and .675 springs are as this cam is the largest cam I have ever ran. I am running the stock single roller and the stock pump without problems and will ditch them for better then as the timing chain can be checked for wear which should be negligible with my fluidampr 25%UDP ...... (Chains do not stretch they wear).... the little rollers wear from the gear teeth. Good luck to you, I know they make little cameras that go into engines ....... I had four plugs break off in my 2006 ford f150 Harley truck due to their long two piece design and carbon build up and had to have their fragments sucked out of the cylinders.....( a 100k plug like changed to 60k on the tritons...three valve heads that at least did not loose plugs like the 2 valves from not enough head material to secure the plugs..can you say OMFG I have to helicoil or get new heads..wonderful how fords got to avoid so many giant recalls....). And hopefully you can find a place to rent you camera and see whats up in there. And hopefully the place that sold you that cam takes it back......
Once I bought a pair of Dart iron eagle heads for a 406 I built, they came with out there concentric valve grinding machine that makes the valve surfaces for the heads where the valves seal working right and none of the valves would seal...... I was pissed, I had to send them back on my own dime,(70$ shipping and have them reground) and shamed them into sending a whole new gasket set to redo the job along with a "complimentary t-shirt")..... my labor was of course free.... then I reinstalled them as I had a local machine shop make the extra steam venting holes in the heads for $200 already...(400s had siamesed cylinders and required this extra venting for the block not to go crack...etc). Good Luck to you J ! P.s. Its sad Americas industrial base and manufacturing has gone so foreign, its all about the economy, and unless some big changes happen in Washington and such its only going to get worse along with the strength of the dollar as this is not a true economic recovery and the housing boom...I saw that and the stock market crash coming miles and miles away...... Be prepared.

[JCunningham]

well ill be removing my cam tomorrow or the next. i pray the bearings are ok. I bought a mirror that ill run in there to inspect them. then I was thinking ill run a 12gauge bore mop with assembly lube on it on a cleaning rod and lube all the bearings and the cam befor i put it in.