I just recently replaced my timing components AND cylinder heads but have this audible ticking going on that has stumped us.
You said 1000mi after your timing install, you ran a VagDiag and noted the phase position off 4* but ran no codes.
How long afterwards did you drive with the 4* off before the 2500rpm implosion?
Did you note any particular hesitation, stutter?
Did you note any odd noises?
How on earth does a valve shat upwards through the intake manifold?
Sure I will take more pictures, I haven’t had the time to tear that head off and do a proper investigation of what happened, but I am nearly positive that the only catastrophic failure was that one valve itself. I think that something happened to cause only that valve to get hit (that’s a huge discussion in and of itself), and as it deformed/shattered, the pieces stayed in the quench area long enough to slam into the plug prior to being ejected. This is what it looks like to me so far.
This would be a good discussion for another thread for sure. I will post if i run into reinstall snags, I think it’s going pretty smoothly now, just spinning some wrenches :P.
What I meant is that I didn’t find any codes associated with that cam phase position initially. It did register a very low misfire count on that head from what I recall though, but that’s not terribly uncommon. As far as I know that is easily within acceptable tolerance range for cam phase position. I did get an out of phase code at one point in the 1000 miles and it ran like a dog for a few miles, and then once the vehicle was restarted it went back to normal. Again, good discussion for the motor explosion thread.
I drove the ~1000 miles with it at that phase. The morning of the actual implosion, it ran perfectly until it stumbled and blew up, no advanced warning in the 2 minutes prior to stumble/catastrophe, no funny noises (and I listen/obsess constantly about noise related troubleshooting when driving any vehicle). This happened end of may if I recall correctly, I don’t know if I have all the facts totally straight here. Let me gather my thoughts/proper facts and start an engine implosion thread at some point in the near future, as I am in danger of being misleading here.
Very likely explanation… if you can Def make a thread out of it. We can dig through and see what’s what.
Lookin forward to the post when the car is up and running again.