nikkshepherd

doing the valve cover gaskets on my 3vze and noticed that the passenger side cam appears to be getting less oil than the drivers side. The inside of the passenger valve cover looks almost completely dry, whereas the driver looks like what you'd expect a valve cover to look like, drenched in oil. all of the lobes look fine, so im stumped. truck has 210k miles.

Is this normal or common?

if not, what could be causing this? a failing oil pickup maybe or something clogged?

Any advice would be great.

finger pointing at passenger side


Passenger side


Drivers side

Andy A

On the passenger side, the oil enters from the rear camshaft journal and travels to the front via a passage inside the camshaft. May want to remove the passenger side camshaft and see if any of the oiling holes in the camshaft are blocked along with the hole at the rear of the cylinder head.

Looks like the passenger side is getting some oil though. Passenger side has more varnish build up on it for some reason.

nikkshepherd

decided to chalk it up to an original 23 year old pcv valve. Thing was clogged up so much that there is no way anything was getting through it. Added some mystery oil to help clean up some of the sludge. Hopefully this fixes the issue.