Wear marks on can lobes. Should I be concerned?

[golfmiser]

Check out the wear marks on the cam lobes. Odometer read 116,000. What do you think? One cam has 2 lobes that's like that. The other one has 4 or 5. I pulled the covers to replace the valve stem seals. Run them as is or replace?

[RacerX]

When I swapped mine out at 145,000 miles, there wasn't a mark on them. See if any members here have some cheap from doing a cam swap. Those don't look good and will cause more wear.

[golfmiser]

Yea I was going to replace the valve seals and see if that cleared up the problem with the excessive smoke at start up. If so then I'm going to pull the engine and transplant into a F100. Now that I see this I am having serious doubts. I have a lot money already in this but I don't want to put a ton hours into this project just to have to redo it.

[Zack]

That engine was not properly maintained

I don't think the cams will cause you any grief though

[sailsmen]

Put in some STP Oil Treatment and for get about it.

[golfmiser]

I couldn't actually feel the pitted area. I guess I will go forward and change the seals seeing I have them in hand. If all goes well once this is done I will be ordering the coolant mod and upgrade the water pump.
Thanks for the input.

[lifespeed]

That doesn't look so good, and the baked-on oil sludge isn't a good sign either. I am not a big fan of slapping things together with problems still lurking inside, but I may value my time more than most.

If it were me and I wanted the engine to run for a long time I would pull the heads and take them to machine shop to check and/or replace the valve guides, seals, springs, hydraulic lash adjusters (these could be beat judging from the cams) and cams. Check the followers and cam timing set too. Chain slap when run long enough can beat the valvetrain.

I know this costs money. Never quite understood how people are able to do free car maintenance. The alternative is run it till it breaks and don't forget to add oil to replace the burned oil and change the spark plugs when they foul regularly.

[MOTOWN]

If the heads are in that condition so is the sbortblock! , i would leave it as is , or do a complete rebuild.

[fastblackmerc]

I couldn't actually feel the pitted area. I guess I will go forward and change the seals seeing I have them in hand. If all goes well once this is done I will be ordering the coolant mod and upgrade the water pump.
Thanks for the input.

What is upgrading the water pump going to do for you?

[RacerX]

That engine was not properly maintained

I don't think the cams will cause you any grief though

Wut? U have prob with 30k oil change? :D

[golfmiser]

fastblackmerc it was you're suggestion to change that I change that and the thermostat while I had the engine out. The water pump on there looked like it had leaked some. I bought the car already totaled.