Shepherdguy
Junior Member
Well, it appears my 2010 Ram 1500 with a 5.7 Hemi may have developed the dreaded Hemi lifter/cam wear issue. Not so much from a loud tick but I developed a misfire in the #5 cylinder, mostly under load. I have ruled out the spark plugs, injector, and coil. I also tested for control signals on a scope to the injector and to the coil and get uninterrupted signals to both the injector and the coil. The exception to that is when I misfire severely, the CEL flashes and I notice the injector then shuts off, but it's just the PCM responding to the misfire (I believe). So plugs, coil, injector, wiring, and PCM seem to all be ruled out leaving only mechanical. I performed a compression test on the #5 cylinder and got 200psi. That's a bit higher than I expected so tested the #3 compression and got 210psi, both with 5 cranks and both repeatable through several checks. There are no issues with the number 3 cylinder and the #5 is within 5%, so I think I can safely say it's not top end. I was going to perform a leak down test on #5 by why - 200psi is excellent compression and no way that I can be getting a misfire with compression that high (or as far as air bypass is concern). Which leaves me with the bottom end and the all too familiar wear on the camshaft cause by either a camshaft hardness issue or failed needle bearings in the lifters depending on who's opinion you listen to. The cause is not my concern at the moment - the fix is. As far as I know, there is no way I can test for the bottom end failure aside of tearing into the engine and if I have to do that, I'm going to replace the lifters as the engine does have 188000 miles on it. My expectation is I will find a damaged lobe on the camshaft so I want to have all the parts I need here to do the repair before I tear it apart. In trying to find the Mopar parts I need for the job, I am finding that I can get the rear lifters but the front lifters have apparently been discontinued and I am not finding a replacement part number. It shows the rear lifter sets as 5038786AD, which they have and the front as 53021726BC, which is discontinued with no information on a replacement. RockAuto shows my truck uses the 5038786AD for the rear and a 5038785AD for the front. But when I bring this lifter set up at a Mopar store, it tells me it is not compatible for my truck. All Mopar store sites that I tried give me the same information but they all seem to reference the exact same parts list. Any thoughts on this? Is it possible that the Mopar parts list is incorrect or not updated and all Mopar parts stores are pointing to the same outdated parts list? Or did Dodge decide to wash their hands of this problem and discontinue a suspected defective part without coming up with an alernative. Anyone know what's going on or where I can get the lifters I need for the repair.
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