new 11/27/01
My name is Paul Kruger, and I live in SW Ontario Canada.
Tim, I came across your website today while looking for other people with cam sprocket failures. My 96 SHO with around 100k (km's, or 55k miles) seems to be right in the middle of a failure. It's been a ticking noise in the valve cover area for the last 2-3k km's. We thought it was a water pump, and it has been getting worse, to the point where I don't even drive the car for fear of it failing. It now is VERY noisy when warm, and the water pump tensioner is getting pulled in and out at the same rate as the noise (which is why we thought the pump was bad, and it was getting tough to turn over at times). But it looks like it's the cam that drives the water pump making this noise. We've pulled the belt on the pump, but to no avail the noise is still present.
I'm a small performance shop that deals mostly with import cars, and small work.
We do engine importing and other such things, but I don't have the equipment to
pull the motor on this car (it's too big and heavy). I don't know if you've been
following along with all of this, but is there any hope of me just pulling the
effected cam out and having it repaired? Without pulling the motor? I've had a
serious run of bad lucky lately with a few other things, and they're isn't a
hope of me paying a shop to do this for me, the bills related to this seem to
end up in the 5k plus territory which I simply can't put out right now. To add
insult to injury I just bought this car (within the year) for almost 17k by the
time taxes were worked in on it. It's a mess, and I over extended myself on it
to buy my first practical and reliable family sedan. Ha! A motor failure
basically under 100k km's. That's RIDICULOUS.
Anyhow, thanks for putting up a page regarding this, your more than welcome to
add my name to the lists of people with this problem. My e-mail address is
currently blkrx7@home.com but will be
changing to blkrx7@rogers.com shortly.
Thanks!
Paul
KAR Performance
Waterloo Ontario