My engine developed an unusual rattle at high rpm last weekend. I’ve just taken the cam cover off to inspect. The high lift lobes on cyls 3 and 4 are all f#cked up. They dont appear to have had any lubrication.It appears the engine may not have any oil pressure? The spray jets look clear?
Its just plenty of oil in it and only has 12K on the clock. The warranty ran out last month too.I haven’t even had chance to take it on track yet?
I haven’t got a clue what to do now
I’m guessing the dealers will take me for every penny I have if they have to strip it down just to tell me its FUBAR.
I’m going to speak to Lotus in the morning, but I’m not expecting any miracles…
Got me worried now, mine has a slight ticking noise, usually nice and smooth when off cam, but a couple of trips on to the upper can and i get a tapping noise.
What do i need to look for if i take the cam cover off ?
My car is also out of warrenty but i did report the noise when it was in warrenty, and as usual when i took it to the dealers the engine was nice and quiet, but they did make a note of the tapping noise,
Lotus have said that that there should be an o ring at the end of the spray bar which lubricates the cams. I’m guessing that this o ring has been omitted or distorted and the oil simply splurts out out of the annular gap.
Even though the car is out of warranty it should be repaired under your consumer rights, there’s no waaay that a cam should wear through in such a short period.
I just thought I’d add that my car was reg in sept 04 and now has 12000miles and has only run on OE oil.
If anyone else is concerned then pls contact your dealer, I dont want to be held responsible if someone damages their engine by attempting to dissasemble their cam cover etc.
Mine is on the case now and im waiting for a call back.
My car is a 04 and currently has 18k on the clock and has had the tapping noise since i got it with 11k on the clock, i was not sure if it was normal and as stated above was mentioned to the dealer when it went in for its service.
Mine is all back together now so i cannot check for the o-ring that you mentioned.
The follower in the pic’s is on the inlet side closest to the timing chain, the lobe on next cylinder to this one is also showing signs of wear.
Fingers crossed this all gets sorted ASAP and in our favour.
TBH the tapping was starting to do my head in , cos i knew deep down something was not right
Mine is in for its B service this Friday. I’ll get my cams checked - how long does it take to diagnose this issue? is it a 10 minute job or does it take longer?
Mine has had a tappety sound pretty much from day one…:gulp: can only hear it under 3.5k seems to go away then?? It definately seems to be getting louder aswell (or that could be my imagination, who knows?).
As I recall I took it back into the dealers after a couple of weeks and they said they all did it, I thought it could have been the sound of teh injectors firing, but what do I know about engines? I just like to drive the thing… (that must of been my first experience of TADTS then!!!)
I’ll get the covers whipped of off mine and have a look inside to see whats what if anything…It has worked quite hard the last 18 months in my possesion and I have done all but 500 miles on the clock.
Just out of interest if they are starting to wear away, is it just a case of fitting new ones or will more damage of occured along the line somewhere else, ie wear on one item promotes wear on another?? You mentioned something also about oil feed problems Bob, is this deffo the case and do you think Phils car is suffereing the exact same problems as you in the fact teher is a design fault or just a shear coincidenec??
If the cams are significantly worn then the followers will no doubt be worn too so they should be replaced at the same time.
Yes, everything should be replaced with finest Piper Phase 2 cams I think!
I’ve looked at the oil spray bar on mine tonight. It has an underdrilled section at its start to control the oil flow rate. I think I’ll overdrill mine slightly to get a little higher oil flow.
I’m also wondering about shimming the oil pump PRV to get the pressure up a tad…
Before I start I have no experiance of the Yota engine, however we used to shim the oil pump spring back in my cossie days to increase the pressure.
I am guessing you have thought about over drilling the oil spray bar, don’t you think the resulting drop in pressure may cause problems else where? Mind you I guess if you shimmed the pump and over drilled the spray bar the one would cancel the other out.
The cossie YB engine used a spray bar to cool the underside of the pistons. Most of the heavily modded ones used a different spray nozzle from mountune that incorporated a ball bearing so that at lower engine speeds (and lower oil pressures) the jets would close to keep the pressure up.
Hi Chris, yep its annoying for sure. Depending what the Lotus dealers say I may may getting those Pipers we were discussing at the last meet after all.
Sean, you are very correct regarding the effect of oil spray jet modifications, I will have to put some thougth into it. I dont mean to sound arrogant but I’m actually an analysis engineer dealing in engine lubrication for the company who used to be called Cosworth Engineering (we’re called Mahle Powertrain now and and we still own the intellectual rights to the YB engine design). It just such a bizarre coincidence that you should use that example! Cheers guys
One thing im worried about with this problem is that replacing the cams & followers will only sort resulting damage caused by the real problem which still needs to be identified - the cause of the lack of lubrication.
I think im going to have a dig around on a couple of toyota forums to see if this has cropped up elsewhere, after all this is a pretty common engine, and as far as i know it has not been modified by lotus apart from the ECU.
Does the stage 2 Piper cam (285) not suffer from a lump tickover ? has anyone fitted them yet ?
I know Dan @JPS has fited a set of piper cams to an S2 (not sure which ones though probaly the first stage that piper do), and yes he mentioned something about lumpy idle and the need to update the ecu to gain the best results, he was waiting for the emerald jobbie to be released.
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