Crane Cam/lifter Failure!

Last Monday I felt something not quite right with my engine (4.6 stroker engine I built last November). It felt like water in the gas so I added a can of gas additive and drove around the block, but that didn’t help. When I pulled in to my complex the engine lost power and started wheezing, one cylinder would puff back through the intake. I pulled the plugs and found all were perfect except for #1 which was black with a dry film of soot.

I then pulled the valve cover and found I could push down the #1 exhaust lifter by hand. All others were tight. I suspected a collapsed lifter so I pulled the head and removed the lifters. Sure enough, #1 exhaust was completely cupped and worn away to the inside oil passage. The #1 intake lifter was cupped and almost worn through like the exhaust lifter was. Also the #1 exhaust pushrod was bent slightly.

I purchased a new cam, lifters, valve springs and keepers from Crane for this engine. I am working in Daytona, Fl this summer and Crane’s headquarters is in Daytona so I took them all back to Crane. The Crane engineer told me that something in the oil came and prevented the lifter from spinning in the lifter bore. He said it could be a piece of lint. He said this was very common failure in the initial start up and break in of a cam, but not on an engine with 5,000 miles. I doubt very highly that there was something in the oil because the oil was changed after the cam break in of 20 min, after the first 100 miles, again at 500 miles, and again at 1,000 miles. The oil was good quality non synthetic oil. After that it was changed to Mobil 1 synthetic oil and that’s been changed twice using Mobil 1 oil filters on all oil changes. I left all the lifters, pushrod, and also the head with the Crane R&D department for analysis. Crane agreed to provide a new cam and lifters under warranty. Crane refused to pay for gaskets, head bolts, fluids, and labor to replace their parts that failed. I am happy in that Crane is standing behind their parts and will replace them but I wish they would also cover the other parts that need to be replaced because of their parts failure.

I dropped the pan and pulled the main bearing caps to check on the bearings to check for metal particles as well as clean out any metal shavings in the bottom. There is a very slight scoring of several main bearings. The wear pattern on the bearings looked normal with the exception of the slight scoring. The cylinder bores looked great and the cam bearings looked good as well. Should I be concerned with the main bearings?

Has anybody have any idea of what could have caused this failure?

Should Crane pay for parts and labor or at the very least parts?

Is this standard policy to not cover the cost of other parts needed for the repair?

I will post pics later tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks,

AARON

Holy crap, almost this exact same thing happened to me!!! Granted my problem did happen after initial break in and from what I could tell, my problem was I had a valve job done on the head prior to installation, which caused the valves to be seated in the head a little further than normal. This threw off my lifter preload on a couple of cylinders and due to the non adjustable rocker arms the 4.0 has, I had realized all of this until after teh catastrophic failure. I called Crane and they made me send back the lifters and cam and replaced it for free. They say that they normally have a policy of failures like if it happens once, but if it happens twice, shame on you. Anyway, check the preload, and if you're sure thats fine, then I am a little stumped. But your symptoms were the exact same as mine, backfire through intake, bent pushrod, mushroomed lifter, etc.

MrShoeBoy said:

Should Crane pay for parts and labor or at the very least parts?

Is this standard policy to not cover the cost of other parts needed for the repair?

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Not paying for the extra parts and labor is pretty standard. Most of the time that is why I disregard the warranty. Many companies (I highly doubt Crane is one of them) will make shit parts then throw a good warranty on them because the chances of someone keeping it long enough to wear out are pretty low.

I went throught 10 NAPA lifetime alternators in 9 years (175K miles). I got pissed and bought a cheap Shucks one and it's lasted 3 or 4 years.

Personally I wonder if it needed more lube on break in. Damaged it then and it took until now to finish off. Could have been a fluke though. I've had my Crane stuff in for about 20K now?????

Good Luck,
Lincoln

The cam lobes and lifter bases are lubed by splash (no direct oiling). That is why you need to run the engine at 2500 rpm from the instant the new engine is started. If you let the engine idle, it can kill a lobe quickly.

Now it's question time... are the mains "smeared" where the damage is along the lenght of the bearing shell? Or are there spots where the material has come up? Or is the wear peculiar little circles where the wear spots are a different color as the rest of the surface? Is there any copper showing? Is there any visible marking on the crankshaft? Is there any problem with the rod bearings...I'd check number 1 especially. Have any high quality pics of the damage?

I'd suspect that the event that bent the pushrod caused the checkvalve failure in the lifter...If "lint" in the lifter was the problem the lobes and lifter base would be unaffected and the problem would have surfaced immediately in the form of a miss and the traditional lifter noise.

I dont believe the dirt caused the lifter to fail. The motor was hot tanked at the machine shop and then wraped up and put into the back of my dads car. Once it got it got home that same day, it was washed again with soap and water and lots of brushes to get into all the cracks. After it was dryed and oiled it was inside my garage and the door never opened once it was inside after the washing. At the time of the motor assymbly you could eat off the floor in my garage so I refuse to believe there was dirt in the motor. Plus wouldnt this have happened sooner if there was dirt in the motor? Also the intake lifter was starting to dish as well. My machine shop thinks that I might have just gotten a freak set of lifters from Crane. I am going back to Crane on Monday to see what their R&D department says about my head as well as the cam. Pics are attached.

Two of the bearings have what looks like a very slight groove running all the way around the bearing. I can see it but cant feel it by running a finger nail over the bearing so its not deep. The rest of the bearings look normal and are still practically the same color as when I installed them when new.




AARON

nice shoes Aaron

Purple said:

nice shoes Aaron

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LOL Since my hands where covered in oil I had my mom taking pictures and they are her shoes

AARON

Just throwing something out there. Most of my eyperience is with the 4.2 and Dodge motors.
Got to ask yourself what the intake and exhaust lifter have in common, if they both had pretty much the same wear.
I´ve never seen an oiling diagram for the 4.0, is it possible there is an oil blockage downstream. That shut off the oil to both the num 1 intake and exhaust. Know Dodge V-8 has, sharred oiling through the crank, for valve train componenets.
Jeep recommends installing the rockers into the original locations, may be relavent may not, same with the push rods.
Detonation bends pushrods, loose valve train is usually a gradual thing. If a lifter gets loose/weak it will get pretty noisy.
Did you use Crane springs?
Valve train rattle is out of time/pre detonation, a bent push rod, will affect can affect the force of the burn, almost like running a dead cylinder, just to a degree. Pretty much has to affect valve train wear. Though probably pretty gradual. The push rod flopping around in there, could have caused a valve to contact a cylinder and bend a pushrod.
The studs/bolts backing out, holding down the rocker, causes strange things to happen, sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once. Not likely num 1 intake and exhaust backed out together.
I´d try and find an oiling diagram and look there first.

I would hate to tell you how many times I have had a block hot tanked and "cleaned", only to get it back, run a passage way brush through the oil galleys and come back with tons of crud. Your shop can be spotless and still end up with crap in the engine. I have a set of very long flexible brushes that can be run through the oil passages to dislodge the crap. They are similar to the brushes used to clean spray guns, only much longer. Personally I use Castrol SuperClean, force it through the passages, followed up with the brush and hot water under pressure. SuperClean even on a tanked engine will remove a surprisingly large amount of hardened varnish and sludge.

Back to the shared oiling, If number one intake and exhaust share oiling, is it possible a bent rod, made a pressure imbalance causing an oil loss to number 1 intake lifter also? Oil is gonna flow to the lowest resistance, which is likely the bent pushrod lifter. I´ve seen contact/hammer damage from insuffienct oiling, usually shows as spaling on the cam (among other things, like weak springs and poor breakin).
I´d really like to see an oiling diagram for the 4.0, got to be one someplace. I´ve had questions in my mind about 4.0 oiling myself in the past. Never really did find the answers. Maybe an early 4.2 oiling diagram would be close enough, not to make much difference?

I dont have an oiling diagram unless its in the FSM somewhere. I know theres a plug at the front of the motor that goes to the lifter oil galleries.

Crane called me today and said the installed height of the exhaust spring was off by a hundred thousands. They said it could eather be the wrong type of springs or the installed valve height is too shallow. They are checking the casting number on the head to get the exact year and specs of the head to verify that everything is with in spec. Crane also said that even if it was a bad machine job, they would still cover the cam and lifters! I am very impressed with Crane's customer service.

AARON

Doubt the oil is getting to the top or the cam galleys in one passage riser.
I could be on the wrong track, but I´d hate to see anybody, put it all back together again and at least not look.
Tolerances and/or catstrophic failure is always also a probability. Especially with steep grinds and changed geometry.
The system oils from the bottom up, the crank getting the oil first.
Had a valve that looked like a reverse mushroom, hardly noticed, when I did, all I had to do was replace the valve. Never caused any other problems I´ve noticed, 2-3 years ago.
Good luck with your motor, if I were you, I´d really like to have a diffinitive answer, on what caused the problem in the first place, luck has never treated me kindly.

Did you check the valve clearence upon assembly? I had to put shims in mine to get it right,might possibly be wear from over compressed lifters to begin with...just throwing out ideas.

If you end up with nothing to do with the cam, I'd pay for you to ship it to me. I'm going to TA a failure analysis class at school, so the professor and I are always looking for broken parts. I took the class 2 semesters ago and this is some of the stuff we did...

http://forums.hotrod.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=4523&an=0&page=6#4523