Thats what i see. Its so much cleaner, makes me think HG or a crack and coolant is steaming out. That would explain the nasty top end sludge/varnish.cylinder #2 looks much cleaner than the other three. Do you have a head gasket leak?
That's not the one that's pitted.
Did it ever have periods of sitting for a while? I've seen a much less serious example of this on both a 72 mustang mach 1 351c engine (low miles - lots of sitting) and a 79 Cadillac seville (also low miles and sat a lot). No symptoms, both were getting a camshaft swap by my friend who owns them and that's the only reason we discovered it.
Not necessarily, once the hardened surface has been worn through, the softer metal can wear like pictured, and specially once it got really hot and mailable, which it would if it was starved of oil.
That is in fact true, but is not the common cause of the failure that looks like this. (what appears to be an dimensionally correct cam lobe with chunks missing) Again, when a cam lobe wears through, the missing metal is obvious and often circumferential. Maybe we need more detailed pictures of the lobe.
Yes. Nothing fails from compressive stresses. Somewhere along the line, the tension induced on the surface of the cam exceeded the strength and strong enough to open cracks between the metal itself, then the crack propagated and the piece fell off.
www.tribonet.org
My 2002 EP3 Civic had the well-made cams known for doing that on Civic Internet forums. Happened around 60k for me. Same thing...ticking, was going to check the valves and...lobes grooved. New cam and no issues for another 100k before I traded it in.
I was trying to clean up the varnish the past year and #2 is where the oil filler cap is.... that's where the Kreen was poured in....cylinder #2 looks much cleaner than the other three. Do you have a head gasket leak?
That's not the one that's pitted.
I'm replacing the cam and rocker assembly
Is yours a timing chain or belt (didn't look back at the pic to see if I could tell). If chain, I stuck a bungee cord into the chain at the TDC mark and hung it from the hood to keep tension in it and mark the location of TDC. There are probably better ways, but it worked for me after some thinking. No guarantees it'll work every time. I may have just gotten lucky...
Plenty of oil changes. Good oil.
The experiences of a dealer technician that regularly sees cars owned by individuals that don't maintain them themselves, and follow Honda's OLM.
If you don't fix it now the cam will only get worse and very quickly. I'd say less than 2000 mes or so. Plus you don't want all that metal circulating around. The filter won't catch it all.
I'll tell you this, it wasn't UNTIL I used Mobil 1 in my Accord that it developed varnish. Take that for what it's worth.I was not going to mention the varnish, but at this point feel I must. That engine was not a M1 regular user. Even at 10K OCI's, M1 will leave a nearly spotless cylinder head. Absolutely spotless. That is specifically what it is designed to do.
My Jag X-Type has 225K and is spotless. Ford F150, 200K, spotless, Ford F150, 355K, spotless with a little yellow tint.
This is what an 200,000 mile, M1 engine looks like:
I'm sure the varnish and sludge is from following the OLM. I figured it was safe to do because I was running 95% high way miles for long distances. 9-11k mile OCI's were common for 170k miles. Since then, I've dialed it back to 5K mile OCI's and have been running Renewable Lubricants 5w30 and 0w30 oil.
