camshaft bolt

[joe87tsi]

So my motor stopped running. i pulled the valve cover to find the bolt that holds the camshaft sprocket to the camshaft snapped. everything is in place. the half moon seal and distributor shaft are keeping things together. will replacing the cam and cam bolt remedy things? will timing be hard to reset? Edited November 2, 2010 by joe87tsi

[Indiana]

Depending on the piston type and valves things can get changed over the years you might get lucky and maybe you have bent valves. What you need to do is pull the spark plugs, get the crankshaft a quarter past TDC or so and get the distributor out and the bolt should have had a lock washer and a flat washer and all this may have fallen into the oil pan. Take the dist. drive gear from the cam gear and pull the cam gear forward. There should be the remains of a dowel pin in the end of the cam you'll have to remove that and the piece that's in the cam gear and part in the dist. drive gear. This could have happened in a couple ways. One way the bolt wasn't tight and it came loose and the dowel just sheered off, another way is someone replace the rocker assembly or just the cam tower caps from another head and it just locked up the cam and ate up the head in the process just prior or maybe there are hydraulic rocker arms on mechanical shafts and the cam was ate up and a rocker arm busted and caused the cam dowel to sheer off. You need to get the cam free of the drive gears and get the pistons anywhere but so that any are at the top and try to turn that cam with something. If it turns easy great, if not remove the rocker assembly and see how bad it is. Its possible the head is trashed, or maybe not. It wouldn't be the first time someone swapped rocker assemblys from another head and ruined it all.

[joe87tsi]

thanks a bunch