Guys, yesterday at the junkyard i found a '90 240 sedan with a B230F and only 97000 km's on it. Was smashed up, so obviously written off. Anyway, I was out collecting valve shims and decided to buy the whole camshaft ($20), since it looked very good. I also bought the throttle body ($20) and the IAC valve ($10).

Here's the problem: I have a '91 740 (B230F, NA), and the camshaft appears to be exactly the same as mine except for there's a roll-spring pin inserted into the end of the camshaft where the distribute shaft inserts into - so you can't run the distributer off of it. I can't think of a good way to pull it out. So is it worth it to keep it?

Regarding the throttle body, it appears to be open, just a hair, when "fully closed", and I can't feel the faint click of the sensor tripping when I work the throttle on it. I wonder if someone adjusted it because the IAC valve perhaps wasn't working. Seems wierd that would be the case with only 97k km's on the car. I wanted them because I thought they would be good, with so low miles. Maybe I should ditch both those items.

So I'm wondering if I should just take all that stuff back, or maybe go whole hog and grab the whole head next weekend - assuming I could convince them to sell me the head for the marginal cost of the head minus the camshaft I already bought. Any opinions? I would appreciate the input. Yes, I've read on here that camshaft lobes generally don't wear, but I'm not so sure about that. And, not only do I not have a dial indicator gauge to check them, but I don't have the oem specs for the lobes to know what they should measure.
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1991 740 automatic, sedan, B230F Burgundy/Tan Leather

From afar and without examining the parts:

Camshaft: If the roll spring was put in, it can come out. At worst you could go to a machine shop and have it extracted. If there is a hole in the middle of it, an easy out or similar could probably get enough grip to remove it.

A bigger issue is the end machined to accept the driven end of the distributor shaft AND have it timed properly? A spring pin is normally round and that shape by itself does not create a positive non-rotation receptacle for the distributor shaft.

Throttle body. A slight gap between the plate and body would be normal. The final air for idle is then controlled by the Idle air valve.

No click from switch. In the process of removing, did anything shift? Since the switch will have to be adjusted once installed, release the switch and see if it clicks as it rotates on the leaf shaft. OR, could the switch be a rheostat from a control system that uses variable resistance to determine throttle position instead of open or closed circuits.

This may not be advice per se but may be info enough to help you make a decision.

Duane

Thanks for your input Duane. I'll put up a few pictures tonight sometime. I guess what I was trying to do was have good spare parts here for my car, and these ones had so low mileage on them it was pretty tempting.

Regarding the throttle switch, I like to manually work a variety of throttles when at the junkyard, to feel for that click, and 9 times out of 10 I can feel it on these things, and hear it. But this one I think has been adjusted a bit to stay just a hair open, and not close to the point where the IAC valve is required to open and allow the idle air in - possibly because the IAC valve was non-operational I wonder? Please re-check this later - I'll put up a few descriptive pictures.

Ok, here's a picture of the end of the camshaft. You can see the roll pin jammed in there, preventing you from inserting the distributor shaft. But it is machined for the drive dogs for the distributor.



The lobes are nice too:



I don't know what to do.
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1991 740 automatic, sedan, B230F Burgundy/Tan Leather

If you got to get that out. You can heat it roll pin up to a dark cherry red with a acetylene torch. They are only tempered spring steel.

It will heat up very quickly because it has a lot less density than the camshaft.

Let it cool slowly.

This will anneal the metal of the pin to make it soft.

Then drill it out.

Hope this helped

Phil