broken camshaft, oh $hit................

[Robert1970C20rstbukt]

Last week the engine in the pickup blew all to hell. Me and a couple friends were at the back of the college seeing who's exhaust was louder and obviously I revved the engine a little too hard(yes i know that was a stupid thing to do, i damn sure learned my lesson!). I heard a loud clunk and the engine cut out. I thought it threw a rod, turns out the camshaft broke and shot out the back of the expansion plug up against the flywheel. Had to get a redneck wrecker(another pickup with a tow rope) and pull it to Grandpaw's house. We pulled the 350 out tuesday and finally got the 307 put in and running today. It's been bored .040 over and has .010 overside bearings on the rods and mains. It runs great, 60PSI oil pressure at a hot idle and the gauge pegs out while driving down the road. We bought it for $150 almost a year ago(which was a hell of a deal, we didn't even know it was a factory rebuilt engine with not that many miles on it), just never got the time to swap 'em to rebuild the 350 which was pretty tired. The only major thing we did was take the 2 barrel intake off and put the 4 barrel on it with the Q-jet. I plan on taking the 350 apart tomorrow and see just exactly what happened, and rebuild it when $$$ allows.

[rage'nrat638]

well it's great you got your engine back in.
not to good for the 350 somehow i'am thinking something more is going to be broken inside the block casting wise. hope you can save it

[RACINJASON22]

LIFTER BORES to be sure. ya don't see cams break to much on street engine unless you were doing something like that. I have seen a few at the track and soory to say there is little hope. the cam is likely not the first thing to have went. Get some pics too show us what can happen when we feel froggy. Good Luck getting another back together.

[Zoomad75]

If the cam came out of the back expansion plug, it had to get by the distributator. Not good. Hope the block isn't trashed from it.

Must take carnage pics too!!!

[Zoomad75]

The original 350 out of my blazer broke the cam. The PO must have wound the poor tired engine out in Granny gear, 4 low while playing off road. Cam didn't break first. But it did break the cam into mulitple chunks from the broken rods swinging around. At most I ended up with a 4 inch section as a garage paper wieght. Dang thing was spitting lifters out of the pan when DirtyLarry brought it to his house on a trailer.

Pretty specatactular engine carnage. I took a chunk of a connecting rod cap, drilled a hole in it and made it into a key chain. Mostly as a reminder of what can happen if I get too stupid with the skinny pedal. Might recommend that to Robert.