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| Cam caps show very little damage, some scoring that might have already been there. WPC helps soft aluminum as well. |
The top end was the area that received the greatest damage. The cam journals in the head were completely unharmed and the WPC treated caps that see the most loads were like new. The WPC treated cams had light scoring and were probably the source of the squeaking noise as the cam is the hardest part of the engine to lubricate as it sees the highest point loads and is not pressure fed on the lobes.
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| The cams were the second most damaged part but they would be reusable! |
The lobe’s damage could barely catch a finger nail and was more like a little discoloration than actual damage. A little polishing with some 400 grit paper and an oil stone should make them useable. We have used cams much more damaged than this before in race engines.
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| The cam followers were the most damaged part of the engine. This is probably where the squeaking noise was coming from. They were slightly discolored and very slightly scored. We could just touch them up with some 400 grit paper and an oil stone, re WPC them and re use them but we will replace them just to be anal! |
The WPC treated cam followers are the most damaged part in the entire engine. They had very light scoring the worst of which could hardly catch a nail. These too could be polished and reused. We have reused worse parts than this in a pinch with no problems in race engines before. The valves with WPC treated stems and valve guides were fine with no wear at all.
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| The damage to the cam lobes was minimal. We are going to polish the discoloration and super minimal scoring out, re WPC them and reuse them in another engine. This is the lobe with the most damage. |
Overall we got off pretty easy. We are re-WPC treating the crank, installing new bearings just because, using new WPC cam followers just because and we were going to change to new, more aggressive cams anyway. Our oil pump is going in the trash so it won’t accidentally be reused and will be replaced with a higher capacity SR20VE pump using a GSpec front pulley with an adaptor spacer which allows its use on an SR20DE.
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| This is the lobe with the second most damage. We have raced stuff worse than this in a pinch before. |
If we were poor, we could have just put this engine back together with a new oil pump and it would have been fine. We were most impressed with how WPC treatment allowed our engine to survive under these conditions even with our botched diagnosis! WPC did not solicit this article we just felt that we had to share our experience.
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