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Hello!
I have yet another Cam adjuster thread for you.
Canadian 2015 C63 507 series. 70k km / 43k miles. This car is stored in winter and only driven in the summer. I recently bought it from a private (2nd) owner that had it for few years.
After few weeks of starting it up, I heard the usual rattle sound at the startup, regardless if the engine was cold or warm. It wouldn't happen every time either so I knew it wasn't "super urgent" to fix but still decided to take a stab at taking the cam adjuster apart myself and replace the plates with the Stage 1 63motorsports replacements.
So far I managed to take the first adjuster apart (driver side intake which seems to be always the most problematic, which is also where the noise was usually coming from). There is a tiny spot where the lip is already taking an oval shape, it's not terrible though.
Onto the "weird part". When I started taking the cover apart, I noticed strange spots on the adjuster. I've yet to see anyone with a similar looking adjuster so I decided post here about it. I could see through the oil cap that some weird residue was sitting on the adjuster. Once I took it apart, I cleaned it with break cleaner and it seems like the adjuster itself is ... "rusting"? I am not really sure what i am looking at and what would cause this to look this way. The other 3 adjusters are "fine", not perfect, but not as bad as this one.
Is this something I should be concerned about? Before starting this job, the car ran smoothly, with the odd mechanical sound at startup and rough idle for the first 30 sec. No CELs or other noises while driving.
Is it possible someone put in an additive or something that caused that? Seems strange it's only that 1 adjuster which is right where you'd dump fluid in? I'm in Florida where it's super humid and mine had no rust.
Is the car stored in controlled temperature space or unheated? Thinking that temperature fluctuations is allowing moist air through the filler cap when the temp drops, this is the first area of the engine this air makes contact with. The moisture condenses causing the rust. The others are not exposed to this. More ambient air temperature cycles allow this to happen. Controlled temp storage would have less impact. My theory. I have a corrosion background but not in the auto industry.
Is the car stored in controlled temperature space or unheated? Thinking that temperature fluctuations is allowing moist air through the filler cap when the temp drops, this is the first area of the engine this air makes contact with. The moisture condenses causing the rust. The others are not exposed to this. More ambient air temperature cycles allow this to happen. Controlled temp storage would have less impact. My theory. I have a corrosion background but not in the auto industry.
Thank you for the insight. This might be the case since the temp fluctuation are pretty crazy up here in the north. Could this also be caused by a leaking oil cap? I'm assuming the car was stored in a garage over winter months but likely not heated. This will now change.
12 C63BS Magno Alanite Grey, 25 X5 Msport, 08 BMW E93, Ducati Hyper 698
To me it looks like rust and pitting being the CA below the oil cap I would think somehow water got past the cap and or condensed on the cap and the cam adjuster rusted from the moisture - maybe someone took some high pressure water to it then let it sit for the winter and a little got in there, but just a guess. Being it is the only one and under the oil cap I would guess that is somewhat related.
maybe someone took some high pressure water to it then let it sit for the winter and a little got in there, but just a guess. Being it is the only one and under the oil cap I would guess that is somewhat related.
Good suggestion. I recently replaced my cap gasket as well. I didn't know that was thing but it was cheap and easy enough.
So today I managed to take apart another one of my adjusters. This time the driver side exhaust cam adjuster.
Upon opening up the adjuster and expecting to see a typical used up backplate, instead I find that THE SPRING AND THE PLASTIC PIECE ARE STRAIGHT UP MISSING! I was blown away by this but it also explains why the noise was always coming from the driver side when starting up my C63! I am 99.9% sure that no one has opened up these adjusters before, which means this car came like this FROM THE FACTORY! There has been no records of anyone doing this work before me, and the gaskets and bolts all seem original.
I am not sure if anyone else has seen this or if this has been reported before, but I wonder how widespread this might have been?
Now... by saying that. I have a replacement spring from 63motorsports but does anyone know where I can get the plastic piece that holds the spring in place? Should I just improvise and find something "close enough"?
Here is a picture after opening up the cam adjuster. You can clearly see that the pin has not damaged the backplate as much as it should, and that the upper plate is actually eaten up a lot more than the ones with a plastic piece. The pin slides perfectly into the groove of that plate.
That's really strange. I wondered that when I replaced mine, you get a new spring, but that little plastic part that lives in high heat most of it's life... how does that never get old/brittle and just crack or melt? This was my worst one around 72k miles:
Last edited by skullbox15; Jul 13, 2022 at 08:06 AM.
Definitely rusting/pitting, almost looks like an old gun that someone stashed and forgot about.
It almost seems like someone had it, never drove it or changed the oil for several years because I'm curious how it could be possible for the engine oil itself to not leave enough on the adjuster itself to keep it from rusting like that if you're regularly maintaining the car...
That's really strange. I wondered that when I replaced mine, you get a new spring, but that little plastic part that lives in high heat most of it's life... how does that never get old/brittle and just crack or melt? This was my worst one around 72k miles:
At least you had all your springs in correctly lol
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