How do I OM out the sensors for a 1997 5.7 vortec.

[Road Trip]

Cam is now chewed and lifter is dead, do I have to pull the engine for a cam replacement or do I just remove the radiator and condensers.

Uh, reading between the lines you are considering just replacing the cam & lifters
and leaving the rest of the engine as-is? Thanks to the all the ultra-hard debris
from the chewed cam & lifter, every single bearing & bearing surface should be considered
bad until proven otherwise.

You have suffered a worst-case FOD event. (Foreign Object Damage) If you have
an emotional attachment to this motor (think muscle car owners who want to keep
their ride 'numbers-matching') ...this engine could be overhauled and reinstalled, but
if you want to just keep the truck going it may be a lot easier to swap in a suitable
replacement.

Sorry about having to share such bad news. My 2¢ worth...

 

[oniontheoreo]

I agree, but any time you look at bearing surfaces I feel like there always bad anyway. But the tap only just started to get bad so idk. Washing it out with 0w-16 might help

 

[Road Trip]

I agree, but any time you look at bearing surfaces I feel like there always bad anyway. But the tap only just started to get bad so idk. Washing it out with 0w-16 might help

If this was my motor, belonged to me, the plan is to be the final owner
before it's scrapped? Then I would pull the motor, completely disassemble
it, give it a mighty quarter carwashing, wipe all the machined surfaces down with
solvent, double-check the cam bearings, put a rering/bearing/gasket
kit in it, stuff a new roller cam and those LS7 lifters in it...and throw the
dice & see what happens.

But do this on an engine with my name/reputation on it for someone else?

Nope, still too risky.

Of course this is your engine, and you can do as you wish. But in reply #13
you mentioned that you already considered the engine to be a 'sketchy rebuild'?

Caution. Caution.

(See attached for bare minimum recovery kit post cam failure.)

 

[Erik the Awful]

At the minimum drop the pan and oil pump to clean them and change the oil filter. Yes, you can pull the radiator and condensor and swap cams without pulling the engine.

 

[Illbedipped]

When you say you "replaced the injectors with better ones", did you change the injectors to a different size hoping to get more HP's? Did all of these upgrades happen at one or what? Replacing a ton of parts and having one cylinder misfire points back to something related that one cylinder. Swap the injector and see if the problem follows a different cylinder.

 

[oniontheoreo]

When you say you "replaced the injectors with better ones", did you change the injectors to a different size hoping to get more HP's? Did all of these upgrades happen at one or what? Replacing a ton of parts and having one cylinder misfire points back to something related that one cylinder. Swap the injector and see if the problem follows a different cylinder.

Already fixed this and no the better injectors I was talking about was the MFI spider instead of the stock 1997 spider. I just have an issue with my cam and lifters now.

 

[97blackbowtie]

I realize you have moved on to the cam and lifter issue but one thing that no one has mentioned yet with the distributor being changed was a camshaft/crankshaft relearn. Unfortunately on the 97 it can not be done with a scanner. It has to be be driven at certain speeds for 'X' amount of time, rinse and repeat like 5 times without using the brakes etc etc.
I also have a 97 and this helped with the oddball hard start and random rough running patches after chasing electrical gremlins(ICM connector was bad) and changing out damn near all ignition parts. Just food for thought.
Also, I came here looking for how to 'trick' the PCM without having to use the O2 sensors but realizing I might as well get out the step bit and the welder and put em back in.

 

[oniontheoreo]

So I've pulled the lifters. Nothing was chewed, only a small scratch line on an exhaust lifter. The tick was probably coming for on of the pushrods not being fully seated. A good handful of rods are pretty snatched up to. But I still haven't pulled the cam, however I did check the lobes with a bore scope to see any visible damage and there was none. Oh btw my engine has the ls7 lifters, so if anyone asks yes you can use them, just make sure you have the correct pushrods because they do seem a little bit longer than the stock 97 vortec roller lifters) but I did overestimate the damage.