Cam gears for V6. Add power AND mpg

I don't know if he'll want to touch it after this happened...

 

Fuck it I need to sleep at night I’m tack welding mine.

 

Lock tight? Now I'm scared of doing mine. Lol, hundreds of people with zero issues and all it takes is one it's like, my truck runs fine now, is it worth having to LS swap my truck if the part I want blows up? Is the extra 5hp and 2mpgs worth it? I dunno

 

I can say, @gpdx and I almost ran into this (I don't even really want to say it was almost) - when we were tightening the bolt, it took a minute before the channel lock slid into place, we did have to back off the bolt, re-position and re-tighten it. I'm not saying for certain this is what happened in your situation, but I can imagine something along these lines happening.

I'm curious though, was it the passenger side that failed?

 

Driver side he said

 

hmm maybe my theory is off then... I remember when we did mine the driver side had more of a "gap" when compared to the passenger side... we were second-guessing ourselves too... that sorta "one doesn't look like the other" moment

EDIT: I can say I'm pretty confident we did mine correctly as I just took a trip from vancouver wa to packwood, wa and smashed the gas pedal hard enough to bounce the rev limiter on some forest roads...

 

The passenger cam shaft wanted to jump on @TheOnlyPajooned ’s truck when we put the new gear in there. So it took a little finagling to line it up the key hole. But we checked both gears and tensioners multiple times after that.
Crazy to think about the cam gear bolt coming undone. The engine running should tighten it down. That’s why they’re so difficult to loosen.

 

We're both still baffled by the situation. I can confirm 100% that the keyway was lined up before he put the bolt in and tightened it. The only thing I can think of is that the sprocket wasn't fully seated or was slightly crooked when he torqued the bolt. If that was the case, once it was running it seated itself all the way leaving the bolt loose. It's all speculation. He thought for a minute at first that he didn't tighten the tensioner bolt down and second guessed that but found what was left of the tensioner was tightened down. I remember watching him torque the sprocket bolt down. He did find a replacement engine to the tune of $4k.

 

With how the cam bolt seems to self tighten itself over time, I still don't see how this came to be. Such an odd thing. Probably a situation where tightening over spec or just tight as you dare go wouldn't be a bad thing

 

I like the idea of putting a tack weld on it...

 

I'm kind of thinking the same, that the gear wasn't fully seated when it was being torqued down. Because that's the only thing I can think off, even though the engine would tend to tighten the bolt further. Sorry to hear about that experience.

@Kidwidataco , I think you should be fine. Just take your time and make sure things aren't rushed and everything is seated nicely. This was the first time for me touching cam gears and I was pretty nervous taking something out that's precisely timed. But it all turned out fine. I think one thing you can do to help with your sanity later is take pictures. Take before and after pictures of the gears and other areas, so you can compare and confirm things were put back as it should be. The changing of the cam gears was actually the easy part for me. The SAI (which you don't have) was the worst of it. I would've been done a lot sooner if it wasn't for that.

After driving hundreds of miles now with the cam gears, I'm glad I did it. I still feel the difference in power when I drive it. Better get-up and go for sure. I would definitely not go back and most certainly would do it all over again if I had to. I haven't really been tracking my mileage super carefully, but I have noticed better mileage overall. The 1.5 mpg improvement that everyone seems to get is about right for me. Drove 70 miles the other day with a 400 lb load and was surprised I actually hit 20.4 mpg on that run. Normally it's 18 or 19 at best.

 

I'll probably still do it. It's the most involved thing I've done with a tacoma though. Engine wise at least

 

Thats my thought, doesnt the rotation of the motor lend to the bolt wanting to tighten itself overtime.

maybe bolt TOO tight and caused the bolt to fracture/weaken then ultimately fail?

 

I may just give in and buy new bolts to install for a little more peace of mind that they weren't previously stressed and torquing to spec or over on reinstall would be too much.

 

I’m curious who finished what side first. Maybe it was a digital torque wrench and it was set to 14# from finishing up the other sides tensioner bolt and at a quick glance though it was 74# and not the 14# it needed to be.

 

The more I think about this, the more I might drive my happy ass up to you when I do the install. If you're easily persuaded with beer and all....

 

Sounds good

 

That's not too bad for a 1GR FE... Best of luck with the swap

 

I finished my side first on the passenger side. We were not using a digital torque wrench. It's pretty easy to know the difference between 75 ft lbs and 14 ft lbs just feeling it. I was over there last night helping him strip the motor down to get it ready to be pulled this evening. I messed with the cam sprocket and tried to see if it could be torqued down crooked and it kept straightening itself out as I tightened the bolt. Granted, the pin did fall out of the camshaft when things went bouncing around in the the area and there was no chain pulling on the sprocket when I tried tightening it (last night). In the end, all we've got are hindsight thoughts of maybe we should have triple checked to make sure it was seated, maybe loosened it and retorqued the bolts again. We just can't explain what happened or how it happened with certainty.

 

Is it worth me going ahead and deleting my secondary air injection pump when I install the URD gears I ordered? truck also has URD long tubes.