Hi guys!
I'm preparing my 3rd VQ35 swap. With my last one, I had a dowel pin that broke and the engine died. So I was wondering if the cam spacer could be welded on the cam? I'm planing to go rmt, with forged rods, forged pistons8.8/1cr), decked block, oversized to 96mm and all the other goodies to make it reliable. With all the spending associate to this, I don't want another dowel pin failure. Any sugestions?

Thanks for shiming in!

 

drill out the cam or do a full swap

 

I want to keep my jwt ecu, so I'll will do another VQ30 timming swap.
By drilling the cams, I wont need cam spacers?
If it is so, I'll seriously consider HR cams....

 

You still need spacers but you wouldn't need the adapters, the dowel pin would go through the hole in the spacer and into the sprocket.

OP: did you locktite the cam bolts and torque them to 90ish lb/ft?

The 96-99 V8 Ford Taurus Sho had similar issues from the factory, the V8 Yamaha engine had the sprockets separate from the camshafts and so the community welds them together to solve this problem.

 

I did'nt built this last one. So I can't say if it was locktited and properly torked. Normaly I used the VQ30
cams for reliability. But now I'm tired to rebuilt or buy other cars. It end up costing more than the big
job I'm planing now.

So welding can be a option? It sound more sturdy to my ears than just a dowel pin.

When welding, do we have to get the cams rebalanced?

Thanks for the inputs, guys!

 

Drilling it will result in the same level of reliability as a stock setup, the only difference is the washer that spaces the sprocket out more. The drilled intake cam would resemble the exhaust cam setup with the stephen max spacer, the exhaust cam doesn't need to be drilled or used with an adapter because it is the same position as the VQ30, but the intake cam would be drilled and the dowel pin moved to that location.

The dowel pin doesn't take any of the force when the camshaft bolt is torqued to spec and loctited, it just is used to line up the sprocket.

 

Yep. Dill out the intakes. I believe it's a 7mm dowel pin you'll need.
I still have CNCd spacers I had made from like 4 years ago. If you want a set pm me.

 

Thanks, but I'm going to use the ones I have in my old engine.