Camfail040604.doc-V8Sho.doc

An Assessment of Ford 3.4 Liter DOHC V8 SHO Engine Camshaft Failures by Bruce C. Lamartine, Ph.D. 4/27/2004  Copyright ( 2004 by Bruce C. Lamartine  ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bruce Lamartine is a Technical Staff Member and Intellectual Property Coordinator at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to that, he was a Technical Staff Member with both the U.S. Air Force Materials Laboratory and Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Lamartine has led successful failure analysis teams for the U.S. Air Force in the fields of pressed metal powders and electronic emissive materials. He has 75 scientific publications, 7 issued US and foreign patents, 1 pending US patent, 3 pending foreign patents, 5 biographical citations, and 12 career awards including the Air Force Commendation Medal. His research has centered on surface chemistry, failure analysis and production plant troubleshooting, and nanoengineered surfaces.  ABSTRACT Camshaft failure in an interference engine such as that used in the 3.4 liter DOHC V8 engine of the 1996-1999 Ford SHO (also known as the Ford Gen III SHO) could be a potentially lethal event. Sufficient literature indicating premature failure of the drive sprockets existed years before production commenced on the Ford Gen III SHO. From the literature publicly available prior to production, we were able to use both a gear tooth stress model and a valve train resonance model to predict a band of failures remarkably consistent with the camshaft failures actually occurring after production. Available Ford Gen III SHO camshaft failure data were analyzed by nonlinear least squares regression techniques. The most probable camshaft failure mileage was found to occur at approximately 70,000 miles, beyond Ford warranty, but still early in engine life. Consistent with the physics of random impacts and the assumption of the use of St 52 DOM steel tubing in camshaft assembly, th