After reading about the tappet guide issues associated with these engines, I decided to take the cam covers off my car. It has 58,xxx miles on it at the time the pic were taken.

If you are thinking about doing this, be aware that the old gaskets are very difficult to remove. One of mine came off with the cover and the other stayed on the intake. Took me hours to get it all off both sides.

Looks like my guides are fine for now.

 

The loose tappet guide syndrome does not affect all XK engines. At some time during production changes were made to production methods, and thus caused the problem. When Jaguar spotted the problem, the interference fit value for pressing the guide into the head was increased to cure the problem. Trouble was the problem took some time to appear.

I suspect the problem arose in the 70s sometime, as this was the era of appalling quality in the British Leyland era, in fact it was not just the car industry, the 70s were a decade of complete and utter madness and stupidity in the UK; I know, I was there !!

 

FWIW....

My unscientific conclusion, after years of Jaguar discussions, is that catalytic converter equipped cars are most likely to suffer the tappet guide issue.....and virtually exclusively on the exhaust side only.

I don't recall any mention of it happening on any other variants.

Just my observation. Not presuming it to be the final word on the matter.

Cheers
DD

 

Those pictures of yours brought back some memories, I can tell you !!