Hemi Camshaft Failure Mystery Explained
Somewhat of a mystery over the years has been these random roller camshaft failures in modern Hemis. Uncle Tony just made a video explaining his findings on the issue. If you are interested here ...
Forum Discussion
dodge guy wrote:ksss wrote:dodge guy wrote:ksss wrote:hvac wrote:
It appears idling is what accelerates the failure. If so police applications must be experiencing high failure rates.
That is true, incredible failure rates here locally. The 2011-2014 seem to be the worst. The local pd has auctioned off the majority of Chargers. The City mechanics are continually pulling these apart, repairing them only to have to do it again. Really something not right with this engine.
We do work for a couple of towns around us. It’s not idling. It’s the geometry of the cam and lifters in relation to the pushrod/rocket arm. Also the poor quality roller bearings in the lifter. With the amount of Hemis on the road the failure rate is very minimal.
What the reason is for the failure, I am not sure maybe idling or poor components, but to say it is minimal simply is not true.
Well we are a larger dealer in a big suburb. If anyone would see them fail at an alarming rate it would be us. Like I said we only see a handful a year.
I had a second today and I swung by the City shop (reference this thread) as I know some of the mechanics. In the bay was a 2014 Hemi police car with 60K on it. Valve train out. I asked the mechanic for his take on these. He leads me over and starts pulling cam shafts and lifters off the shelf. Points out the flattened out lobes and the lifters smashed down on themselves. Pretty clear the lifter locked up and took out the cam shaft. I took pics but this website is a PINTA for posting pics. Each mechanic has their camshafts from the repairs they have done. There are others that were done by the dealer. They tried aftermarket lifters and the life was even shorter. According to the dealer the mechanic said that there are 18K lifters on backorder. Many cars are dead lined and auctioned off, way short of the anticipated life span. I mentioned this thread, the mechanic had a lot to say about these engines and would gladly share what they have experienced. These are all LE cars, and are subject to prolonged idle time. The oil is changed at 5K, maybe as some have said is part of the issue, certainly poor engineering is as well. The pd has deadlined 13 of the 33 Chargers that they still have. If the dealer is telling the truth about the out of stock lifters, certainly this isnt isolated to what we see in our area.
