I have a rebuilt 22re with approx. 1300 miles. The cam shows wear lines on all the exhaust lobes it has since approx 300 miles. The cam was a new crane cam, new enginebldr rv head and new rockers. Valve adjustment has been on and very consitent which leads me to believe wear is on camshaft only. The intake lobes look great and the engine seems to run fine. Is it common for the exhaust lobes to show wear? Do not know what I would do different if I were to do it again. Any advice or info would be appreciated. Thanks

 

Are you using OEM-style head bolts with the necked section or ARP studs? How did you break the engine in initially? Are the marks new or did they show up initially? Good oil pressure?

 

The engine has arp head studs. Break-in of the engine fired it up took it to approx. 2000-2200rpm for just about half an hour. I pulled the valve cover around 300 miles and the marks were there. The truck has factory oil pressure gauge when hot at 1500rpm it is dead center at idle hot it is at the first. Have not installed an after market oil pressure gauge yet to get a true psi. Thanks

 

This worries me. If you compare the profile of the ARP studs against the OEM-style bolts, the stock bolts are necked down because oil flows through the rocker girdle around those bolts. There's been hints that it causes oil starvation problems (and I want to say on the exhaust side in particular), which I really couldn't nail down definitely and so I stuck with the Toyota bolts. It's also possible that there was contamination on the cam or rocker follower feet, but that would just as likely be on the intake side as the exhaust I would think. I'm sorry that I don't know any more than that, but what you've described is exactly what I feared would happen with ARP studs on my engine. Thing is, I don't have any specific examples to back up my concern beyond rumors. I would call Ted at Engnbldr and talk it over with him. He would have a better explanation of what causes this, be that oil starvation or something else.

 

Thanks for the info and ideas in the head studs. I did talk to Ted at the 300mile mark he said to keep an eye on it. I have and dont like what I see so I am going to change out cam and lifters and possibly head studs. LC engineering thought that the wear was caused from not using genuine toyota rockers. What seems to be the cam of choice for low end power and torque?

 

Yeah, the ARP studs. I really wanted to use them, but couldn't get comfortable with them. I ended up replacing my old rocker assembly parts with ones from LCE. They supposedly use all Toyota parts there (at least the rockers and shafts). They, like Ted also, I guess found that this is one place that Toyota makes the best part. The aftermarket rockers have problems with the hardness of the followers and just plain quality issues with the rockers coming apart.

I put in Ted's 261C cam in my engine, but it's a later 22R-E. I'm just finishing the major break in period (I'm at almost 700 miles now) and so I'm just now trying more and more stuff with it. I have not yet gone off road with it, which is really the test. But driving around in town and on the highway I would say the engine's best pulling power hits around 2500 to 4000. But I've also been very careful about not lugging the engine and so haven't really pushed it from idle to 2000 to see how it chugs along. Overall the engine seems happiest from idle to about 4000 RPM. When I push it past ~4000 RPM the engine doesn't seem to keep pulling as well, but this is more or less exactly what Ted described would be the case. It's a better 'crawling' type cam. I also have the RV head with the oversized valves, which I would have thought would help with the higher RPM stuff. And it might, like I say I haven't really beat on the engine to see what it's capable of, either. I'm trying not to baby it, but I also just have a problem intentionally being hard on my truck.

 

I ordered all new oem toyota rockers from toyota and a LC engineering pro efi off set cam. Have any of you used the pro efi off set cam from LCE? Was looking at one web site and they said a duration over 280 does not work well in off road low end torque applications. The truck will mainly be used in the hills and hauling small loads. Should I install it when I get it or do something different? Thanks for the help!! Tim

 

Duration of 280 does seem pretty aggressive, probably a great cam for a Celica on a track. But, I don't have any experience beyond the stock and Engnbldr 261 cams and so I'm just talking out loud. What else have you done to the engine besides the cam? Oh, the stock rockers I think are a good move, aftermarket ones do seem to have a pretty bad reputation.