AFM/DoD Delete Advice Needed

Kwing said:

Because when folks A-M are saying "of course you have to replace all this stuff, you idiot" and guys M-Z are saying "you don't have to replace any of that, you moron", then the conversations don't really tell anyone anything! LOL

It keeps floating back up because, at least everything i can find, is that kind of back-and-forth with the ONLY evidence provided to support the claims on either side is "because i said so".

Conjecture is expensive. Sometimes facts are too, but at least if I'm paying for facts, I know I had to.

The alternative, of course, is to replace it all, like your list suggests, performing a concours level restoration on a 20 year old truck with 330,000 miles on it and a book value somewhere shy of $3000, LOL.

I mean I'm really not trying to be a jerk, I promise, but if I had the money to blow $10,000+ on the truck willy nilly, I wouldn't be asking about working on it at all, I'd just buy a new one, LOL.

Click to expand...

the money is my thing too.. I'm not. building a 1000hp racing engine. it's just gotta live a while around town between idle and like 2500 rpm. and this Gen of trucks are listed for about 2500$ on face book around here. yeah they are a bit more beat down than mine, but eh. I have zero desire to fix anything that isn't broken and with almost all new parts, even from the dealership parts department being suspect at best, or down right bad out of the box. the days of me replacing things because it's the right thing to do ate long long gone.

330,000 plus miles, don't think I'd invest the money in an AFM delete.

But that is a bit subjective. Now if the chassis looks pristine, and the transmission is fairly recent..... I'd probably look at rebuilding it, doing the AFM delete on the way.

Most likely the vehicle is in effect totaled..... The repair costs exceed the value. But that doesn't mean don't do it. Just depends how attached to it you are. It has lived a good long life.... And yes, sometimes people put the money into a vehicle with that many miles for sentimental reasons.

But strictly on age measured in miles, especially if the rest of the drivetrain is in need of attention.... It might make the best financial sense to retire it.

Fless said:

Seems very well-explained, with some minimum things to do, along with options if it makes sense for someone's situation.

Click to expand...

Explained in terms of "what" to do, but without any "why". "Why" matters.

Does the AFM cam have different lift? Different duration? Different ramp? Different separation angle? Different centerlines?

And whatever is different, how different is it? Enough to really matter?

Based on RET423's "hashing", which is one of the first ones I've seen that had more than "because I said so", whatever the differences are weren't enough for an otherwise seemingly knowledgeable individual to notice any difference in performance or smoothness. But for every story like RET423's, there is one saying "it didn't work".

Cars/engines are not black magic. They are engineering. "You have to replace the cam" is an opinion. "You have to replace the cam because the AFM cam has X, Y, and Z that differ from the non-AFM cam" is a statement of engineering fact - at least as factual as the teller knows it to be.

I have to get my crippled @$$ under that hood, standing on my half-bionic heel, bending over with my 3 herniated discs putting pressure on my umbilical hernia, inflaming my carpal tunnel, all in 110+ degree Phoenix heat, and at the end of the day when I explain to my daughter why I can't buy her new clothes and shoes, while I'm crying on the couch from the pain I've endured, I'd like to know that the justification for all of it was more than "because I said so", LOL.

rdezs said:

Well this issue is well documented regarding AFM deletes ... It seems like every time somebody posts they want to do it, the whole conversation starts over.

Click to expand...

Kwing said:

Because when folks A-M are saying "of course you have to replace all this stuff, you idiot"
and guys M-Z are saying "you don't have to replace any of that, you moron",
then the conversations don't really tell anyone anything!

Click to expand...

The conversations SAY a lot, they just don't conclude anything.

There are people who have NOT gotten cancer or emphysema or COPD from smoking a pack (or more) a day,
but cigarettes are still carcinogens - they, among other things, increase the odds of getting cancer.

By the same token, some people have not disabled Engine Half@$$, and suffered no consequences. Yay, congratulations to those people,
doesn't change the fact that V4-mode-able V8s are more likely to suffer valvetrain issues (among other issues) vs simpler V8s.
I'm (probably) the ONLY person who had a '12 Yukon XL tuned to do EVEN MORE Engine Half@$$ EVEN MORE OFTEN, and suffered no valvetrain issues
(suffered other issues though) - but I witnessed about a hundred NYC uber/lyft/gett/juno/via drivers of Suburbans/XLs/ESVs with valvetrain issues.

Disabling V4 mode betters the odds. Changing oil sooner than the Oil Life Monitor suggests (in terms of percentage) betters the odds.
Converting the engine to a full time V8 with commensurate hardware DRASTICALLY betters the odds.

All that said, I get why some people can't or don't do a full Engine Half@$$ delete - I likely would NOT've been able to afford one.
Should've disabled Engine Half@$$ instead of what I did.

Marky Dissod said:

All that said, I get why some people can't or don't do a full Engine Half@$$ delete - I likely would NOT've been able to afford one.
Should've disabled Engine Half@$$ instead of what I did.

Click to expand...

I call it the poor-man-tax.

See, from a 10,000 ft level overview with an emergency financial cushion, a retirement account, maybe some stocks, a credit card with a couple grand in it for emergencies... yeah, the obvious answer is "do it right or just replace it".

When you're paycheck-to-paycheck with a credit score so bad even $300 secured credit cards have 50/50 approval odds, then blowing $500 every 6-12 months to half@$$ it until the next shoe drops isn't only more "logical", it's really the only option available. Something that is far too easy for those not living it to laugh at and shrug it off.

The problem is, I'm getting too old for this crap, LOL. A 12-hour saturday isn't an inconvience any more, it's an ordeal requiring weeks of recovery, assuming i can even make it to the finish line without having to take a week to recover in the middle.

But I digress...

I just wanna know if I need to replace the cam! ROTFL

I save SO much more @ CostCo, even though I had to change my outlook from a day or two ahead, to a month or even a season ahead in some cases.

Kwing said:

just wanna know if I need to replace the cam!

Click to expand...

You don't NEED to, it's just a really good idea.
It's a case of 'how much (more) money are you (comfort)able spending to improve the odds that nothing will go wrong?'
Were I you, I'd replace the cam with a different GM OE cam, if only 'cause you said this is the 2nd time the same lifter went bad.
Also, since you can't really look at the cam without pulling out (heh), might as well pull it out and replace it, don't chance reusing it AGAIN.

have you heard of a top side creeper? that might help with the physical side of it. I don't work on mine without bringing one home from work.

so I might have missed it, but did to do a lifter release and the oil block off a while ago and now it's back stuck again won't release and is tapping. if so, that makes me a bit worried that it's not just stuck again but lifter went bad, from roller or tray and ate the cam. so this might all be for nothing.


so if I was going full cheap.. pull the heads, drop in ls7 lifter and new trays from Michigan Motorsports as they seem to sell oem ones. put heads back on, make sure you measure the push rods on the afm and no afm ones. order the correct size to get the reload right, as that might be what most are skipping.. button up and see what happens? you've already got the oil block off under the oil pressure sensor installed and afm turned off in the tune, not just a plug in dongle. so at that point money on a smooth vlom is wasted but pretty cheap. pound the bearings in the tower if you must, cheap but I seem to be the only one that sees no point in that. I have a 110k mile ls3 car, it has the same towers, not blocked off from the factory and non afm lifters. gm did it, it seems fine.

if you do find after that that it doesn't work. the cam swaps out of the front of the motor without removing the heads again. do the wooden dowls thru the front of the block to hold the lifters up as you pull the cam out trick.

over all same amount of work, just split up in 2 parts, and you can spread the money spent on parts out to the next check too?

I don't know.. feels like what I'd try. especially with my hybrid truck, since there's no non afm cam available for mine.(weird Miller cycle cam timing only used in the hybrid ones) was always thinking I'd have to bite the bullet and put new oem afm lifters in it and just not use them again if they go bad.

j91z28d1 said:

have you heard of a top side creeper? that might help with the physical side of it. I don't work on mine without bringing one home from work.

so I might have missed it, but did to do a lifter release and the oil block off a while ago and now it's back stuck again won't release and is tapping. if so, that makes me a bit worried that it's not just stuck again but lifter went bad, from roller or tray and ate the cam. so this might all be for nothing.

Click to expand...

I DID do the lifter release (twice) and oil block, along with busting out the vlom seals to ensure there was no way the AFM lifters could pressurize again. Unfortunately by the time I did that, it was in response to #6 collapsing (ie too late).

Had I known about the inner workings of the system back when I did the long block the first time the AFM failed, I would have done the oil block and vlom seals on the new engine and wouldn't be right back in the same position, but I'z'a too shtoopid for that, LOL.

The whole thing about you comment (and @Marky's) about the cam needing to replaced due to collateral damage is really the crux of my original post.

If the cam is actually different, and meaningfully so, it's an open and shut case: I have to swap it.

If it's just a protective measure because of potential wear or damage, it becaomes a different equation.

This cam only has 130k on it, and the failure of the lifter was gradual, over time, as the vlom pressurized via bleed through. The AFM was disabled, first by dongle, then by HP Tuner, from the moment the new engine went in.

That makes the wear/damage risk much lower, to the point that the risk/reward balance isn't so tipped in the cam's direction...

I have seen those side creepers, but at 250+lbs, the ones that feel safe enough for my fat @$$ are scary expensive, LOL