Broke a cam gear!!!

randoo

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I was driving down the highwat at about 70 and all of a sudden I smell burning oil and the car boggs and dies. I pull over open the hood and there's a hole in the front of the drivers side valve cover the size of my fist!! looks like a cam gear broke and the chain snapped and broke a hole in the vc. The motor is locked up and i'm assuming I broke some valves and a piston or two.

This motor is fully built and has about 3k miles on it. I put over $10k into this motor last summer and now this??!! These motors are sooo expensive to fix!! I had it towed to the builder he said he'll have it apart the middle of the week, I'm praying the bottom end and heads are ok then it wont be so bad ..I'll think of it as a cam upgrade!..wishful thinking.
Has anyone heard of this happening? The builder said he has done hundreds of mod motors and never seen or heard of this. My luck I guess.
 

mustangman36578

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do a search on cam bolt broke. there have been probably about 5 or so other people that have had this same exact thing happen to them and put holes in the valve cover or timing cover too.
 

sleepermobile

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This happen to anyone else??

I had broken cam bolts twice!!! The ford dealer built the motor for me. He didnt know the sprocket bolts were tty. They broke twice before I asked him if he re used the bolts, he said he did. I bought arps and had them installed and no problems now, so far!!! If you have stock cams you will need 10mm arp bolts NOT 12mm. Lucky someone heard my motor rattling before i broke it!!!
 

bent99

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So is that the deal, if the bolts are reused they break. They are fine if they are not reused?? I put 4300 in my bottom end last year and did not touch the cam bolts except for setting up the timing chains....I love my shiny black cobra
 

brkntrxn

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Damn, as someone else stated, you are about the 5th person this has happened to in the past couple of years.
 

kxt

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They are fine if they are not reused??

No! This is a poor design by ford. ARP bolts are hopefully the solution.
 

gmsux

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$90 for 4 ARP, pretty reasonable compared to the expense caused by TTY bolts breaking....
 
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Yellow98SVT

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My understanding is that the last year they used a 12 mm cam bolt was 98. For some reason in 99, they went over to a 10mm cam bolt. I have never once heard of a 96-98 cam bolt break. However, once a month here, I read about a 99+ that does. I have no idea why ford would have done this.
 

PSUCOBRA96

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if the builder screwed up its easy to find out, when he pulls the cams ask to see the bolts because you just want to see what happend etc. you can tell if they are stock TTY bolts or new esp. if its only been 3000 miles
 

bent99

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well I guess im a little ahead of the game as my tty cam bolts have never been reused, as i took possession of vehicle at 8k with spun rod bearing. I guess im installing the arp bolts during winter. Can I simply remove valve covers(we all know how simple that job is) and remove stock tty bolt and install upgraded cam bolts. One side at a time ofcourse.
 

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