I had an interesting thing happen this morning. After getting my alignment yesterday I was going to take the Z out for a shakedown at the autocross track. My engine is fresh with about 2 hrs on it. I hit start button a little backfire and thats it.It wouldn't start. Thought it was flooded. Nope. Checked spark. OK

Took valve cover off, got my wife to hit start button and to my perplexed eye's saw the cam sprocket spinning but not the cam. What the F#@*%

I preceded to pull cam sprocket off. Is'nt there supposed to be a dowel of some sort? Pull the sprocket back a bit further and hear a clink clink as the missing dowel fell out of cam sprocked into oil pan. SH%T

Here we go. One hour later front of engine pulled apart. I fish this magnetic retractible stick I just bought and behold, pull out the dowel.

Has anyone had this happen to them or heard of such a thing?

I'm glad this happened at start up and not at 100mph down the straight away. If that happened at 8000rpm can you imagine. I can. :eek:

Anyway I'll be off to the cam mfg tommorow.

Are you sure you haven't bent a valve?

This happened to me several years ago, was ready to overtake a car, put the foot down and all I heard was rattle rattle corresponding with a sudden loss in power and rapid de-acceleration!

Horrible mess in the head, most of the valves, all bent, some guides destroyed etc.

All because of the Cam dowel working loose.

Apparently it's not common, however it does happen. Do a search on cam dowel for some further details.

I guess I better pull head off and take a look.