can i swap a cam with the engine in the car. rad heater core are out. what else do i have to take off to install a new cam.

 

very simple, you don't even have to take the bumper off. take off the accessories, the intake, the balancer, the cover, timing set, and the cam plate (2 torx screws). The cam will slide out nice and easy.

 

why does the intake have to come off?

 

How else are you going to take the lifters out? You can reach in with a tool sometimes and pull them up if you don't have guide plates in the heads, but it's still just easier to take the intake off.

 

you don't want to be pulling the motor to fish out the lifters when they fall through, do ya??

 

In my sig.

 

so theres enuff room doesnt seem like it but ill give it a try.

 

ez$$

 

You can easily swap a cam in our cars. The most annoying thing may be clearing the cross braces that "X" in front of the radiator. If you drop the crossmember, the engine will tilt which would allow you to skip this issue.

 

what about the ac condensor. also how do i drop the crossmember.

 

Condensor will have to go. How do you drop the crossmember? There are four bolts. But put a jack under the tranny first lol.

 

o that cross member. hell no im not doing that again. i hate putting the slave cylinder on and getting gear oil on my clothes no thankyou

 

..What? You dont have to do any of that just to take off the crossmember...

 

You need to pull the intake, water pump, balancer, radiator, and cam cover. But yes it can be done in the car.

 

i have to pull all that stuff whether its on the car or on the stand anyway

 

I'm personally in the middle of a cam swap and yes the cam can be removed with the engine in the car. My biggest gripe is you have to remove so much crap before you can actually get down to the engine.

I did not have to remove any cross members. I did remove the two bolts at top for the "X brace" in front of the condensor so I could move them out of the way for the cam to clear.

The condensor I just "swung" and lifted the driver side up as a unit with the A/C so the cam could be moved in. I removed all the bolts holding bracket assembly holding the A/C pump (and AIR pump), but I didn't remove them.

I almost got tricked on removing the timing cover (I am not dropping the oil pan). Initially I thought it could not be removed with the oil pan sealed. But after a number of people insisted that the timing cover CAN be removed without dropping the oil pan, I did a closer inspection and found the cover was catching a part of the Alternator/Power Steering pump bracket. Removing that bracket allowed me to get the timing cover off with no problems.

Easy? No, I would not say that. Very time consuming and you need to remove a lot of junk.

 

Yeah no kidding. You can go through all the trouble of dropping the crossmember.....OR you can just remove the 2 bolts holding the x brace.

 

I also want to mention that 90% of the work the job has to be done whichever way you do the swap. In the car or out.

On paper, yes, in the car is less work, but just don't tell that to my lower back.

I'll yank the whole motor out next time

 

im thinking about removing the outer fenders and maybe the front bumper too that way i think i wont have to bend over as far. how hard is it to remove those pieces.

 

great cam-swap article ... too bad looks like no one took the time to read it, though they have questions about the cam swap ...

 

they're much easier to take off, than they are to put back on lol. Aligning panels is way too time consuming for the likes of me. lol

 

You'll have to bend over just as far without the fenders and bumper on, but you won't have anything to lean against anymore.

 

If you mark the the panels with chalk or a marker and realignment is a snap. But if you remove the outer fender the body is right there anyway.

 

I have a small 3ft step ladder/horse that helps in those "tough to reach" spots.

 

Your back will get a bit sore but that comes with the territory. Take breaks and stretch it out. A cam swap is a 12 pack job so don;t rush. It is nothing that you can't get done in a day though.

This is what my motor looked like right before I put the new cam in.

 

i hope i can do it in a day or day and a half.

 

I know this isn't important to everyone, but if you have the time. CLEAN EVERYTHING! ...and paint too. It made a world of difference!

Here's at the end of the teardown day!

 

way to much work

 

I can do a cam swap in abour 2 hours and thats with the new one in and engine ready to start up with it in the car and thats pulling all the damn junk off a lt1 which is a pain in the butt. Hardest part IMO is pulling the oil pan down without ripping the timing cover seal. Other than that, its easy. Only thing that will make it last good amount of time is if your changing valve springs, that crap takes forever.

 

Can't be doing it right. All gasket surfaces gotta be cleaned and all bolt threads, then tq'ed to spec. Everything has to be spotless.

That is not done right. That's a rush job.

 

No, thats doing the job right, I work fast and I do everything correctly. I have a gasket scraper and if you think it takes 1 hour + to clean the intake, waterpump and timing cover for a clean gasket surface, your taking your sweet *** time.

Wanna know the secret? Knowing the bolt sizes for everything. What I find kills a lot of time is jumbling around looking for sockets to fit a bolt and finding things you misplaced.

 

exactly except ive never degreed a cam so i bet it will take a few tries so im guessing at least a whole days work.

 

No not just cleaning the valey and gasket surfaces. The whole thing. Bolt threads, lines, the whole thing spotless. I didn't mean just cleaning those things, talking it alll apart and reassembly too. Can't do a cam and clean everything right unless you have 4 or 5 people working on it. No playing around either as would usually happen, just straight heads up work.

 

My first time with texaslt1 took me about 10 hours. I didn't know what I was doing, I was helping and wrenching but he was doing most of the thinking. Second time, I knew what I was going for, I had all the sockets I was going to need right next to me and 4 baskets for 4 different "area's" of the engine for their bolts (accessories, intake, front of engine, and fan/radiator) it took me about 45 min to pull the cam off to inspect the bearings.

 

Meh, was nothing to really clean as far as threads go. If they look a bit surface rusty to me, spray them with some wd40. Only bolts I actually go through to clean the threads and run a chase through the block are the waterpump bolts and they looked fine to me.

 

All threads must look like new. How else do you expect to get a correct tq. value on them? Dirt adds more resistance to a thread, thus leading to a false tq. reading which leads to a leak.

 

I understand that, but im not that ****. I use a torque wrench on 3 things....Rod bolts, main bolts and intake bolts. Everything else I have always known how far to torque. Its not an exact science.

 

I just don't think you have enough time to even clean the intake bolts and do the rest of the cam swap in 2 hours.

How long do you leave the valey silicone before you start the engine?

 

Now thats a different story. I let that cure for 6 hours.

 

If you change cams a lot I can see you doing in in a short amount of time. Everything brakes loose and gaskets peel right off for the most part. What doesn't peel can be scraped off without much elbow grease. My intake bolts always come out clean. Two seconds to wipe them down or a shot on the wire wheel makes them as clean as possible. You don;t need 4 or 5 people to swap a cam. I was al by myslef the first time I did it and it took me about 10 hours or so. I am about to do it again and I know I will cut that time at least in half if not more.

 

It needs 24 hours to cure before being started. It will leak within a year if you leave it any less.

 

Tell that to my waterpump, T-56 and differential cover that i've had on for beyond a year . I understand your a "go by the books" type of guy. Not all of us are.

 

yea normally for my bolts i just wipe them down with a wd40 rag then dip it in some oil and put them in. what are you talking about valey silicon are you talking about the intake manifold gaskets.

 

They're talking about using silicone instead of gaskets on the china walls.

 

For those items I fill it and drive it right away. Not the valey tho. It's a leak prone area so it needs every little bit of help you can give it. Even the seem between the block and heads I squish a little bit in there and then lay down a bead over it. Learned that little trick from a mechanic friend. I've done it ever since.

 

I've never used gaskets there but I have read about some folks using 3M weatherstrip adhesive on those. Anybody here ever done it or heard of it?

 

Silicone is pretty forgiving when you're using it seal a gasket, or to seal tightly fitting parts. Any time it's used to fill a gap though it seems it needs proper curing time.

 

You sure come off sounding like a know it all dick in most of these threads.


If you think it takes 4 or 5 people to do this then you must not be much of a mechanic.

 

I'm sure he meant "Can't do a cam and clean everything right in two hours unless you have 4 or 5 people working on it"

 

You can continue assembling dirty intakes. Homey don't go that way. I like clean parts. Only way you get an accurate tq. value on the bolts. They are all critical.