[themossman]

Originally Posted by Huggerorange73

Where it goes from here....I'm not sure...GM will try and blame the cam/tune, but the car has run flawlessly for over a year...some pretty serious carnage for an 8900 mile LS3.

Some pics of the damage, and it's place of death and it's memorial.

Sorry to hear about this!

Originally Posted by TRR

Yes we do. He voided the warranty when he put a cam in & had it tuned. That's his mistake. It might not have been what failed, but GM could care less.
TRR

In a bad situation, you're making it worse. I get your point...but sometimes there's a time to keep your comments to yourself.
/chastising

Originally Posted by PQ

So the valves all did in fact hit. Timing for sure. I'd hate for the tensioner to have been the problem. A simple little plastic peice causing all this damage.

The front cover coming off will finish the puzzle. BUT, we all know the chain of events, but they go in a circle too. We may never know where the initial failure was. The bolt could have sheered AFTER the failure from the solid lockup. Tensioner could have failed afterward too.

Be interesting to see the front.

I'm REALLY interested in seeing the timing cover off...but it's going to be messy and hard to decipher....

Originally Posted by SUX2BU

The tensioner in these cars is not a big deal. Earlier LSx motors didn't have one and were fine. The only thing the do is keep the timing a tiny tiny bit more precise. You could take it off and the car would still run fine.

Luckily for me...my oil pump went bad. Why? because when I tore down the front to replace I also was taking the opportunity to replace the timing chain. When I went to remove the tensioner, I realized that it was broken and the metal piece that provides the tension was nowhere to be found. After hunting a bit...I found it in the bottom of my oil pan. I was lucky. My point here is that engine failures associated with timing gear have been a source of discussion for a long time...and allot of it centers around whether the tensioner broke first or the chain broke first. I was fortunate that that metal strap did not get caught up in and foul the timing chain when the crappy little tensioner broke.

So while I can see that the lack of a tensioner could be 'acceptable' and chain slap not significant enough to foul the timing gear...the act of the tensioner failing is potentially a whole different discussion.

I replaced the crappy LS3 tensioner with an LS2 dampner.


And...again...to the OP...sorry to hear about your issues and good luck!