Hello everyone, I recently did a timing belt/water pump on my 1999 Montero, and I'm afraid that I might have messed up the valves. When I was putting on the belt the passenger cam sprung out and I had to put it back so that notches align, it sprung out when crank was at TDC, but somehow I'm still worried if when it sprung out it did not bend or damage valves? I assembled everything back and started engine and it runs overall fine, I have no lights on the dash and no codes in the reader, but it has this ticking sound, I'm just worried if its something I did or if this lifter noise is "normal"?

Please let me know your thoughts.

 

did you recheck the valve timing after fitting the belt and rotating the crank by hand?

 

yes I did! spun it over twice, made sure all the timing marks on crank and cams are matching

 

You are fine. If you bent or damaged your valves it would not run fine due to not sealing the cylinder and having weak compression.

It sounds like when the cam "sprung out" you were fighting the valve springs to get the correct timing marks and it just snapped the valves shut as you tipped past tdc of the cam lobe on an open valve.

Basically It was closing the valves with spring force not opening them.

 

MontyPython.......I watched the video of it running, and I do hear the "tapping" sound.

When you say that the "passenger side cam sprung out", are you saying that the entire cam shaft and the outer belt gear popped forward? If so, how far did it move forward? If you did not have this tapping sound before, then I am wondering if perhaps this happened:

As the cam shaft popped forward, I am wondering if it is possible that one of the lifters came loose and came out of its proper location, and now it is resting somewhere inside the valve cover, and that specific valve does not have a lifter between the cam lobe and the valve stem which would make a loud tapping sound......and I am wondering if the valve would even be able to open.

Here is a pic of my 94 Monty LS just to show what I am referring to:



You can see the small dome-shaped lifters with magnets on each one (just my attempt to hold them in place as I flipped over the rockers to install on the camshaft).



In this pic, I have the "A" marking the cam shaft and the direction it would go as it "popped out/moved forward" as you mentioned. "B" is the location of one of the lifters. Would it be possible for a lifter to fall loose from its slot as the cam popped forward? Looking at the pictures, I dont see how that would be possible unless there were alot of loose bolts holding the camshaft/lobes in place.



So, now I am wondering if you meant to say it "popped forward or moved clockwise or counter clockwise in its rotation"?

However, it could be just lack of oil in one of the lifters, and it should "pump up" as you run the engine and the tapping noise will go away.

 

Monty I'm guessing it is the latter of the two, as I I too don't see how it would be possible to move the camshaft in the A direction with all cam caps installed. If they weren't and it allowed it to slide forward enough to drop a lifter I would expect after moving it back, timing the engine and starting it. It would be very loud and immediately there would be a catastrophic failure. It wouldn't run.

OP will need to clarify what they mean by sprung out....

It's possible that it is normal old worn lifter noise.
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Montylander.....I agree with you. I guess he meant "it sprung out of time". Its easy to mis-interpret without good pictures. Im curious if there was any tapping noise prior to the work being done, and if it goes away after some driving time.

 

Hopefully OP Montypython will get back to us

 

hi, thank you guys for providing all of this inside! I did mean that the cam gear just sprung to the side and became out of time, I don't think I noticed it moving forward? at least I did not have to force it back in or anything like that? and when I was putting the belt back it did not seem like the passenger cam gear was misaligned or popped forward? so I hope that was not the case here either

Again - thank you guys for your replies! I will try to change oil on it and drive it for a bit and see if anything changes!

 

So it should be impossible(under any sane circumstances) to move the camshaft any noticeable degree forward or backwards unless the hardware holding it in position was removed or there is some major wear going on which would cause an awesome amount of damage and racket when running the engine. What OP is meaning by "sprung out" is that the camshaft rotated under spring pressure by itself due to the belt not holding it where it needed to be. I swear all it takes is a soft breath to have the camshaft rotate on it's own when both are placed on their timing marks, especially the passenger side bank from my experience. ( I have timed the 6G72 around 7x by now).

There is not enough spring pressure to damage the valves from this happening, however it's more believable that a hose clamp is sitting on top of a valve in the intake(if you removed the intake manifold) or that a simple change in oil brand and filter caused the noticeable ticking to occur. I suppose that if the valvetrain was sitting drained of oil for long enough, air would most definitely have found it's way into a singular lifter. In any case, I would change the oil if you haven't already and make sure to run the recommended 5W-30 along with a good oil filter, I have tried multiple brands of filters and believe it or not, each one has resulted in varying degrees of lifter noise over the years.(likely due to filter quality/oil flow characteristics) It also helps to prime the new oil filter with oil before installing to avoid the lifters being depressed with no oil to replace it.(resulting in air possibly being sucked in to the empty lifters)

I absolutely have to ask and I'm not trying to be presumptuous but from what I've seen, the biggest point of failure for Monteros that have had the timing belt done, is people not setting the hydraulic belt tensioners angle correctly or even not replacing it and it wearing out. I have this picture below to indicate the proper orientation of the tensioner. Now that I'm typing this out, it occurs to me that an incorrectly set tensioner or failing tensioner can in fact cause a tapping noise when the engine is running, this actually happened to me twice when the tensioner went out. (I had gotten two duds back to back, ooof) If this is not the issue and you set it correctly, please disregard, I'm only here to help.