new 6/27/03
Yesterday I got a call from another SHO owner. He did a preventive inspection of his cams and one sprocket was rotated about 1/8" inch. The car had no codes, no noise, no symptoms in any way. That is not the first owner to find a preventative procedure was just in time with sprocket movement very evident.
Last week we had another double failure, one bad cam and another going. Owner was unhappy that he "only" had about 50 miles of audible warning.
I don't know if it is a function of exhaust or intake cams, but some failures evidently give no warning and as we more emphatically urge owners to take preemptive action the number of "just in time saves" reports goes up. ie: Cars with cams that have moved but not completely failed.
In time we will know definitively how many SHO have cam failure so we need not debate the point at length. If I am wrong (pessimistic) I will be the first to apologize. If however I am correct about 5 V8SHOs will bite the dust every day during 2003, and soon the only V8SHOs left will be those that ware welded or pinned.
If FPS is welding 3 cars a week, and in all the other cam welders combined and if we are not welding 5 cars a day total what ever we don't get to will soon become road kill.
I know I am earning a reputation for being paranoid but increasingly folks are finding a trend that either the repair was either just in time or just a few days too late and they want to know where they can sell the car as is.
The consensus recommendation remains the same, don't wait, weld your cams ASAP. Understand that even those folks who are sure I am "paranoid" got their cams welded "just to be safe."
Thanks for sharing the road.
Buford