I have an o1 gt, I have about 5k road race iles on the engine, which has only bolt ons. for some reason I'm eating up the timing chain guides. I've been running 5w30 motorcraft full syn. so oil pressure to the tensioners should not be the problem any ideas

 

The next time you change your oil cut the filter open with something that won't leave metal shavings in the filter and see what's inside.You can buy a special filter cutter from www.aircraftspruce.com.It's for aircraft oil filters but you can make it work.How many times have you had to replace the guides?How many miles are on the engine total?Is this happening on both sides?Some of the things I can think of would be excessive drag on the camshafts caused by bearing surface galling.The oil pressure being too high causing the tensioners to push too hard on the guides.The chain(s) being defective.One thing to look into after you find the problem would be to replace the chains,because having excessive drag can stretch the chains out of their service limits.These ideas are just that ideas,but this is a mystery that I would like to help solve.Back in the 80's I had a KZ 750 four cyl.that broke a cam chain tensioner and filled the oil pickup screen with glitter sized particles from the sides of the chain tunnel.That soon caused oil starvation that led to a spun bearing.

 

could be the plastic/nylon timing chain tensioner used on Ford cars n' trucks since 2001. I have seen a few failures out of the the plastic ones over the years, might want to check them first. most guys when they do an engine re-build want the pre 2001 steel chain tensioners and not the plastic pos.

 

the tensioners them selves are steel, its the guides that have the plastic shell. The chains ate through the guides right through the alumium backing. This is the third time this happened, but this time the guide broke and the chain jumped off the cam sprocket on the right side head. I had to replace 3 pistons, and all the valves. This seems to happened ever 2000 miles of track time being the car is no longer streetable. I wonder if drilling out the pressure relief on the tensioner ever so slightly will help. I replaced the chains every time, when I had the head off I checked the cam for drag, none found. I led to beleive that the high rpm for long periods is to much pressure for those dinky guides. so far I cannot find a good replacement guide so I guess I'll change them after every 2 or so events... that will suck.

 

then you have a serious problem, I know too many racers that have 0 problems wth the steel tensioners, chains and guides. you have something out of wack, mixxed-bag of wrong parts or your missing something. is the problem wth the fixxed chain guides or the tensioner "swing" arms? whay year engine, which heads and what part # are you getting?

 

I am a ford tech, the heads are stock, the motor is a 2002 it was a warrenty replace long block, the only odd parts are the cams which are comp cams

 

ok, so it's the tensioner "swing" arms your chewing up and its a warranty block, was it a new or re-man?

 

It was new

 

Not sure if this will help but, If your doing strictly race duty with the car, I would go with a straight weight oil, 40 or 50 weight. A racing oil preferably. Not that Fords brand of oil is bad but, there are better ones out there for what you doing. Id ad a oil cooler too if you don't already have one.

 

also if your road racing you can be getting the pump out of the oil in high G's turns, dont know if you have an aftermarket guage to verify this, but more than likly i would highly guess this a problem and you would want a different pan on it. dont trust he stock guage it only reads 4psi anything over 4psi and it says everything is ok... which is wrong.

 

thanks for the advise. the car is a race only. It has a canton pan, with anti slosh baffle, cobra oil pump and cooler, autometer gage

 

Do you have a oil temp gauge? I spoke to chemist at work and he reccomended getting a racing oil that is ester based and not PAO.