3.6 HF crank and cam issues

[regfootball]

I've been seeing that some folks have had problems with their 3.6HF engines in the outlook and stuff. Possibly problems with the crank or camshafts. What does anyone know on this?

[Drew Dowdell]

first I've heard.... and I just turned one in with 46,000 miles on it.

[loki]

if this is true and more than just a few, this would be horrible for GM.

[regfootball]

saturn fans dot com forums is where i read about it

[vonVeezelsnider]

I know. NOTHING can go wrong with this engine considering they're putting them in so many cars and considering how important it is to the turnaround plan. I had a bad feeling that this might happen, let's hope they're just isolated incidents.

[PurdueGuy]

sounds like an unconfirmed problem so far. Maybe a link to the thread(s) in question on SF?

[pow]

I believe it's the camshaft position sensor, not the camshaft itself.

Edit: maybe not...

http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116472

http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113454

http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118185

http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115532

http://www.acadiaforum.net/forum/index.php?topic=3494

http://www.acadiaforum.net/forum/index.php?topic=3217

Edited June 18, 2008 by empowah

[regfootball]

shades of the horror i feared when i owned my v8 SHO. although maybe not as extreme.

vVs is right. GM can not afford to have issues with this motor.

Why is it so hard for GM to pull off an overhead cam v6?

Does anyone know if the running upgrades for 09 on the new DI version would address any of this?

[regfootball]

shades of the horror i feared when i owned my v8 SHO. although maybe not as extreme.

vVs is right. GM can not afford to have issues with this motor.

Why is it so hard for GM to pull off an overhead cam v6?

Does anyone know if the running upgrades for 09 on the new DI version would address any of this?

[Advisor01]

I've been seeing that some folks have had problems with their 3.6HF engines in the outlook and stuff. Possibly problems with the crank or camshafts. What does anyone know on this?

Some truth to this. I work in a GM dealership and we have experienced this twice. There is too much end play in the camshaft and this causes the camshaft position sensor to read excessive variance. If I remember right, we had to replace the heads to correct the problem. I should add that these were not the Outlook. One was a GMC Acadia and the other the new Buick Enclave. Both of these have the 3.6 VVT engine.

[regfootball]

wow this better not become prevalent.

[caddycruiser]

Some truth to this. I work in a GM dealership and we have experienced this twice. There is too much end play in the camshaft and this causes the camshaft position sensor to read excessive variance. If I remember right, we had to replace the heads to correct the problem. I should add that these were not the Outlook. One was a GMC Acadia and the other the new Buick Enclave. Both of these have the 3.6 VVT engine.

Yep, similar things happened with the 3.6L SRX before which also had defective timing chains (that was a fun one for dealers to fix...and several of them), followed by a rather large pool of Lambda's if not others--GMC, Saturn, and Buick--that people would see a Check Engine light and some other funny things, and need a new cam and/or heads because of the defect.

I've read about it for quite some time not only on the Saturn boards, but those specific for Cadillac and also the Acadia and Enclave forums. Not everyone, and it actually was apparently limited to a certain timeframe, but still quite a number of even just forum people having the issue. Never saw anything with the 3.6L Epsilon cars (Aura, Malibu, G6) as such, however.

[regfootball]

the epsilon cars had different hp ratings. maybe they were an entirely different build and thus got a set of internals that was more consistent?