1997 grand caravan Camshaft Broken, how?

[martinv]

What would cause a camshaft to break?


I was on the highway about 45mph accelerating normally to 55mph when this happened. Suddenely I lost power and the the engine quit. I was able to restart it but it ran extreemly rought and would die when I shifted into gear or didn't rev the engine. I did get the van to move about 2 blocks by slightly revving the engine in neutral and poping into drive, but then it died when I had to stop at a stop sign. While trying to restart it did backfire a couple times.

From there I was towed to a shop who removed the fron valve cover eventually and found only the 2 valves for the left cylinder (when viewed from in front of the vehicle looking at the engine) were moving. I have the vehicle at home now and verified this.

This van has a 3.8L engine and about 176,000 miles and was running perfectly before this.

Any ideas why the camshaft would break?

Thanks,
Martin

[96Grand]

176,000 miles.

[martinv]

176,000 miles?

My 1992 grand caravan LE has 309,000 miles. First major repair was the Torque converter at 308,000 miles.

When my 92 dies i'm looking for another 92. For my use I prefer the 92 over my 97 and 98 model.

[96Grand]

Only thing I can guess is that either you have an oil leak that wasn't fixed for a while, or a rocker arm shaft broke and caused the camshaft to break. It's very rare to have the camshaft snap like you describe.

My 3.8 is over 200,000 now and I never had to replace a camshaft. I did do the timing components, cylinder heads, and other crap.