Broke Camshaft

Asked by Sjk019 Dec 22, 2016 at 11:53 PM about the 1988 Acura Legend Sedan FWD

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

My roommate and I bought a cheap 88 legend to
get around for jobs at college. It didn't run but it
was in great shape. After a bunch of tests we
ended up taking the valve cover off and the
camshaft is broke. It's the front camshaft. The left
side spins, and it broke right down the middle.
What lead us to this was the distributor rotor
wasn't spinning. We also checked the main relay
and that was fried. My question is how should we
go about fixing this. We might as well just get a
front cylinder head, but im worried it might happen
again. We were wondering how we check what
caused it. How likely it would happen again, how to
make sure it doesn't happen again or if the motor
isn't worth it at this time.

1 Answer

101,595

You really want to go through the entire motor, because you don't know how many bits of metal or shavings went into the oil and consequently all the bearing surfaces. It could easily be a disaster to just replace a head or camshaft and then have the bottom end blow up or shred a bearing. Tear down the motor, send the block out for hot dip and flush, then rebuild it with all new bearings and timing sprockets, cams, etc. After you tear it down you'll be able to evaluate the block if it needs machine work or not.

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