Diagnosing Slipped Cam Chain VE LEO 2006

[OZTRAX]

My background is as an aircraft mechanic and the reciprocating engines we maintain are dead simple with no ECUs, cam chains and are air cooled.
But have developed some skill in diagnosing automobile systems and servicing air conditioners.
Been helping a mate out with a 2006 VE with a LEO engine. 200K on ODO. He bought it for a song, and the seller said "the chains have been done recently".
He fell for that line, recent must have been when they made the engine........................

An airflow sensor clean and 2-wheel speed sensors got it on the road, and it seemed to run quiet and smooth.
I have a Snap-On solus pro diagnostic tool ($2000 in its day), put that on and no DTCs found. So far so good.
Then we took it for a quick local drive and on came CHECK ENGINE, DTC was a P00018 bank 2 cam correlation error. Cleared it and didn't come on with car stationary but came on up hills or acceleration.

The Solus pro allows you to view the cam and crank sensor wave forms, which i monitored while my mate drove. This is a LEO with only VVT inlet phasers fitted.
I will endeavor to download those waveforms snapshots and put them on here.
The 2/4/6 bank had waveforms matching but under acceleration i could see the inlet cam lagging, not a huge amount but noticeable.
I can't supply how many degrees out as this involves a separate scope and comparing it to a known waveform, probably the other bank would suffice.
DTC P00018 should trigger with 9 degrees mismatch and 10 secs from memory. I think this widened to 11 degrees with latest ECU software revision which i think this car has.

Move forward a couple of weeks and car was smoking from RH cam cover oil leak onto exhaust, my mate removes cam covers and here is what we see:

I have never experienced or seen oil sludge before and my mate out a flush through which i didn't think would help much.

as this soil filter shows

 

[krusing]

What the front door !!
Holly ship ?

And I thought my LY7 was bad when I purchased it.
That is !!! ------> what can I say ! (krusing shakes his head)

Clean up what you can,
Get most of the crap off, by using a scraper, or wire brush.
Clean the rest with degreaser,
Supercheap has a 10L workshop ready degreaser and works well !!! (use rubber gloves)

Drain what oil you can, if it drains !,
May have to remove the sump to clean the sump and strainer,

Replace the oil filter
Run 5.5 litres of diesel oil + 1 litres of diesel fuel mixed with the oil in it for a few days,
Then drain it and see the status of the oil.
Possibly look like crap.

Clean BOTH Cam Covers the best you can,
Make sure you do the PCV mod,
And clean the PCV fittings/plumbing.

 

[Simso1]

Yeh, I bought a ute that had less than regular servicings, looked similiar internally to yours, it lost oil pressure, cam chains came loose, cams skipped a tooth and then pushed the valves into the pistons all in the matter kf 30 seconds of no issues todead engine

 

[Immortality]

Sadly it's not the first time we have seen these types of photos on the forum.

When you take the front cover off the engine it will be much the same.

 

[krusing]

After looking at your photo's again, I am a bit gob smacked !
The oil is baked on !

Being the amount of crap in/on the oil filter,
maybe best to remove the oil filter housing from the block, and give that a good clean,
seeing what's on the filter, will be the same in the oil supply holes, and discharge to the engine in the filter housing,
If you do remove the housing, make sure you have some gasket material to make a new gasket, as I recon the original one will cooked, like the sludge.

 

[krusing]

As I mentioned Diesel Oil,

I have been running diesel oil since Sept 2021, [when I purchased my LY7 Adventra]
Oil change was one of the first things I did, as the service history stopped at 113,000 k/s, and it had done 239,000 k/s, and 2 previous owners, possibly didn't realize the damage they were doing due to lack of servicing, and, like you, left with the massive clean-up.

Diesel oil has cleaned the internals a fair bit,
and I still get pieces of sludge in the filter between oil changes,
so I purchased a bulk amount of cheap filters to change them every 2,000 k's
That said, I knew it would clean it up, but it wont happen over night.

 

[J_D 2.0]

That engine has probably never had an oil change by the looks of it!

 

[Immortality]

I think this one is a bit past just using diesel oil with regular chances.

It's gonna need a good clean, there was another user with the same issue and did an incredible job cleaning it all up, it's all in a thread somewhere on the forum.

How hard is it to get the sump off these with the engine fitted? I'd scrape and vacuum as much from the top end as possible, then wash it with solvents, take the sump plug out and let it drain out the bottom as you go. Once that is done then I'd flush a whole lot of cheap oil through the motor from the top to get all the solvents out. Then fill, run and drop the oil again and again and again over short intervals.

I wonder how a portable steam cleaner would work on something like this after you've scraped away the chunky ****.

 

[Immortality]

This was the thread but unfortunately the picture links are dead

https://forums.justcommodores.com.au/threads/my-sludge-adventure.273333/

 

[Simso1]

Here was mine
https://forums.justcommodores.com.au/threads/1st-day-owning-ve-and-towtrucked-home.300051/

I would stringly advise against starting it until you get it cleaned as good as you can first with fresh oil etc