splashandburn

I ran into a problem today and was hoping someone might be able to help out. I was running around 4000 rpm when all of a sudden one engine shut down. After alot of parts swaping I finally found that the distributor is broken - not sure yet if it's the shaft, the gear, the pin or the cam shaft. I doubt it's the cam becasue we just replaced it with a billet one a couple of months ago. My guess is it's the gear or the retainer pin but I ran out of daylight before I could pull it. My question is what would cause this to just break? And once I pull it do I need to worry about what pieces of metal might still be in there? Thanks for any advice you guys can give.

articfriends

iTrader: (1)

Unless your oil pump locked up or your distributer gear was extremely worn when you put it together I would think your cam broke off but you won't know until you pull the distributer. If the gear is ground off I would say the motor needs to come out and come apart to clean metal out and inspect what the metal did to brgs and stuff before it quit running. Cams breaking,especially crane hyd rollers, seems to be a new trend lately,Smitty

splashandburn

Thanks for the input Artic. I pulled the distributor today and it looks fine. I also cranked the engine and I know at least two of the cylinders have compression so I would guess I did not break the cam shaft but maybe the gear that mates up to the distributor?? I guess at this point the only thing to do is pull the motor and see what actually happened inside. Is this a common problem with Crane camshafts? This only has around 60 hours on it and I'm only running hp500's!

jayhawk261

Is the new camshaft a roller? If so, and if you didn't use the recommended distributor gear with the camshaft, the gear can break. If I remember correctly, you need to use a bronze distributor gear with roller cams. This goes back a ways, and some things may have chaged since then. In any case, I would say you need to pull and look for damage. I would suggest pulling the distributor on the other engine and try to look for gear damage on that cam as well.

Good luck!

otis311

Craig, I have had issues with my cams also. The gears were .006 out of round and they kept chewing up dist.gears. I will call Laz Mesa, my builder and see what info he has on the cams, he has done alot of research on why mine broke. I know there is a bad batch of them out there. Frankie has been a huge help to me and any help I can be for either of you guys would be my pleasure

Bob

splashandburn

Thanks Bob. I wish it was my distributor gears that were chewed up but it looks like it may be the gears on the cam itself. I guess we won't really know what happened until we pull the cam out to take a look.

otis311

I would bet that you have defective cams also !!

splashandburn

Did Crane make good on your cams? I doubt they even have a warranty because they consider them to be "racing" cams.

Griff

Most of the roller cams for marine use come with a pressed on cast gear that is compatible with the standard distributor gear. Not all come that way though. There are often the same grinds with different part #'s. The difference is in the gear.

Griff

You should be able to look down the hole where you pulled the distributor with a flashlight and see the cam gear. have someone rotate the engineby hand while you look.