Drivers Side Camshaft Snapped

Hey Guys,

My mother in law has a 2002 Tacoma ext-cab trd prerunner with v6 5vzfe and auto transmission. The chassis has 384k miles on it, and she had the original motor replaced with another one about 2 years ago that supposedly has under 100k miles on it. She was driving on the freeway the other day when the truck just shut off on her and luckily she was able to coast it to the side of the freeway. upon further inspection it appears the drivers side camshaft pulley sheared off the camshaft. she states the oil light was flickering a few minutes while driving before it shut off. I checked the oil level and it is normal level and doesn't look dirty, could it have been caused by sludge or failed oil pump? the engine still turns over. do you guys think it is repairable or does it look like we need an all new motor ? unfortunately the warranty she had was only for 12 months. she is on a fixed income and I will be trying my best to help fix it for her if I can. thank you guys

attached are some photos of the carnage

 

That oil looks way overfilled.
Too much oil can cause frothing and starve parts of proper lubrication.... i'm wondering if that's what happened here.

 

I bet the cam pulley didn't get torqued down properly and developed a bit of a wobble. The oil level looks good to me.

I'd try to get a salvage yard camshaft and cam pulley and a new timing belt and put it all back together. Bet it's fine.

Might go ahead and get the camshaft sensor in case yours got damaged. I don't remember if cam sensor is on driver or passenger side.. probably driver.

 

Are these an interference engine or non-interference?

 

NON interferance.

 

The v6 is a non-interference engine. The valves and pistons never make contact with each other.

It should be possible to replace a camshaft without removing the head and you must replace the front and rear seals as well as the valve cover gasket. You may need a new cam gear too.

 

You can probably get away with replacing the cam. While you're at it, replace the water pump and timing belt.

 

I'd be weary of the oil pressure light coming on. Once you pull the camshaft you will likely be able to see if it got hot enough to discolor the metal or not. If it did, it would have been being starved of oil.

 

I agree the flickering light may spell doom.

Sure worth looking in the top though and trying to finger out what happened.

Oil looks fine to me and these are not 'sludge' engines.

A failed oil pump though is just one of those things that can strike like lightning. Anywhere, anytime, just bad luck.

 

That side head is more than likely trashed. Take the valve cover off and see if you can spin the cam with some big pliers. If you cant Ill bet that the bottom end is shot too.

 

You are missing something there. Oil starvation affects certain areas faster than others. The front oil passages of that head are farthest from the oil pump, and starve first. That head is toast. The other head is probably about to be toast, and the bottom end most likely took a hit. That was not caused by a 'wobbly cam gear' but by the cam seizing in the journals, instantly destroying that head and snapping the gear off.

The flickering oil warning light, at speed, is not a red herring, but the root cause.

 

I would bet the engine is trashed. I had a sludged up, high mileage 3.0l that did the exact same. When my mechanic tore into it the cam and head were trash.

The amount of sludge and wear in the DS head made it clear that it was not gonna be worth the time to invest any time or effort fixing it if the rest of the engine was that bad. It also leaked/burned a quart every week so I let it go

 

It makes sense it seized up and then twisted it off .

 

Yeah- cam stops moving. Crank still moving. Belt connecting the 2...

 

Gonna be cheaper no matter what to just buy and swap in an engine. Likely, something is severely damaged other than it just being a new cam. Usually cams dont just lock up and stop unless something else has broken. Lots of good cars out there for $2-4k

 

Exactly.

Does anyone else really not see how overfilled the oil is? Im not talking about the super long thin line but up above the "Full" hole where the oil still covers the width of the dipstick.
I'm sticking with the overfilled oil caused the oil to be aerated and the flickering of the light was caused by the suction of oil foam at times and actual oil at others.

If a shop performed the last oil changed they should be held accountable.

 

nah, I've seen one filled to overflowing before. It smoked like a mosquito truck though.

The most likely scenario here is she lost a rod, piston hit valves and put a sudden stop to all that action.

Possibly not that bad but probably so.

 

This.

 

sorry for the delayed post just it’s been slow with everything going on right now. I finally got to tear into the motor and 3 of the front journals are burnt. What do you think caused it? Oil pump failure or sludge? Any chance the bottom end is salvageable ? I already got new heads to replace the old ones

 

Here are some pictures of the drivers side head. After taking the burnt cap ends off I could spin the camshaft with a wrench. I could spin the bottom end by the crankshaft pulley as well as the passenger side camshaft to bring them to tdc