noticed this through my oil cap when topping up my oil. Any clue what’s going on here?
car has 160k miles on it and it’s the N12.

 

What are you concerned about? The cam lobe wear? Looks fine to me with that many miles. Also looks even and not scarred up any. Any issues happening or did you just notice it and thought it looked weird? It's just where the cam rolls on the rocker with the revolutions. Hope that helps!

 

The brown tarnishing suggests a need for more frequent oil changes.

 

I see pitting and corrosion on the cam lobes. Would suggest you check your oil pressure and start using Valvoline Restore and Protect 5W/30 oil.

 

I know it kinda looks like that, but it's not clear there's any issue. Run your fingernail over the cam lobe (especially over the pointy end). You want to feel for any roughness, or a sharp knife edge near the point. If it's all smooth then what you're looking at is probably cosmetic and not a concern.

If it is actually cam wear then changing oil brands at this point isn't going to help. Also the cam lobes are splash lubricated so oil pressure doesn't enter into this: if there were an oil flow problem you'd see it at the main bearings long before the cam lobes.

The brown stuff is just oil tarnishing & build up as Maybe noted. It's a bit more than I'd like to see so maybe better oil or more frequent oil changes might have helped, but the engine also has 160K so...whatever. Maybe that's normal for the N12 at higher miles, it's not like these are Hondas. Anyway there's no thick gunk or chunks of carbon in there that I can see so also probably not worth worrying about.

 

Would highly disagree, if there is insufficient oil pressure, then it's possible there is no oil in the upper end of the engine to "splash" around. Also, these N series engines have problems with bits breaking off of the timing chain guides; those bits get caught in the oil pump inlet screen and can restrict oil flow. With reduced flow, there might be sufficient oil pressure for the lower end, and but the upper end could be starved since the oil has to flow up to the cylinder head. However, since the VANOS system uses oil pressure as a hydraulic medium to alter cam timing, if you did have an oil pressure problem in the upper end of the engine, I would suspect to see VANOS DTCs set. Use an oil pressure gauge and removed the oil pressure switch on the left side of the cylinder head. The new oil pump I have in my recently rebuilt '09 N12 engine puts out 10 PSI at idle with the oil at operating temp. I believe the minimum oil pressure is 5 PSI at idle.

The point of the restore and protect oil was not to make any attempt to correct mechanical damage to the camshaft lobes since an oil can't perform that function; the point was to clean up deposits as Valvoline has developed a new molecule that will clean carbon deposits as it lubricates and cools the internal engine components.

Suggested viewing.

 

Yeah I’ve had the car for almost 2 years and it’s always made a tapping noise. It’s been getting louder within the last 6 months and I put a new timing chain and guides in. Car still makes the tapping noise and it’s not belt related or friction wheel related. I think it’s lifters, but the noise does not get louder rpms and gets harder to hear when rpms are increased. It’s full on oil and I changed it a couple weeks ago. Car drives fine and has no codes besides o2 sensor. I’m just wondering if these marks on my cam indicate anything bad happening. Just wondering what could be resulting in my tapping noise. I’m gonna test my oil pressure and see if that’s the issue.

Video of noise:
https://youtube.com/shorts/ZwSjBbHLwB8?si=jM7M23udBoxoohZk

 

Get yourself a mechanics stethoscope, they're really cheap. Listen all around the cam cover: if it's a camshaft lobe or lifter you should be able to tell which one(s) are noisy. If that's not it then listen all around and see if you can localize where it's coming from. Note that an exhaust leak can also make a ticking noise and that's fooled many a person.

If you hear anything suspicious on the valve cover then it's not too much work to pull the valve cover and directly inspect the cam lobes and rollers. You usually can't tell if a cam lobe is bad just by looking (at least, not until it gets *really* bad) you need to feel all along it and make sure it's smooth.

You can measure oil pressure if you want but that's not going to tell you if you've got a mechanical issue with your cams.