3.6 camshaft questions

[Tryloff]

My neighbor decided to hydro lock his grand caravan with the chrysler 3.6 in it. The hydro lock cracked two con rods. I'm swapping his engine out for him and was fixing a valve cover leak and checking timing on the junkyard engine. I noticed that both his old engine and the junk yard engine had a metal paste on the cam position sensor side of all four camshafts. I'm wondering if anyone knows what that stuff is?

 

[gt1guy]

No idea what it would be but, "metal paste" just sounds wrong to be inside an engine. Could it be some kind of assembly lube?

 

[Tryloff]

I read up in pro demand. It doesn't mention anything about the paste, and has many warnings against putting anything magnetic near the camshaft. So I came out to the shop and wiped it off of the junk engine. Then i held a pocket screwdriver close to the cam and in those spots, the cam is magnetic. So I'm assuming that paste was just war metals stuck to the cam.

 

[gt1guy]

Wow, that's kind of strange. I'm sure a ton of vehicles do the same thing though. It's kind of keeping the oil filter from doing it's job in a way. Granted, the cams are only spinning a half the engine speed and the little metal bits apparently can hang on.............................but at some point there's going to be a blob that lets go.

 

[Tryloff]

Either let's go or enough build up to mess with the cam position sensor reading. Who knows.