Did search the forum for hits, to no avail. Mostly interested in the vin break when Jag updated the timing chain guides and tensioners on the 4.0. Nice to know if I should be concerned or not. Thanks

 

Try again because there are numerous threads on the exact point of year and vin breaks according to tensioner type.

 

The switch from plastic to metal tensioners occurred on August 13, 2001. My '02 was assembled in June of '01 and had the plastic tensioners. Again, there is no relationship between model year, VIN and plastic or metal tensioners.

Any dealer can produce the engine serial number from the VIN within the Jaguar database. The serial number encodes the date of manufacturer of the engine thus the first engine with metal tensioners had a serial number of 010813HHMM (YYMMDDHHMM). The HHMM has not been reliably reported.

However, many have changed the secondary tensioners, either paid at dealer or at home and the job is only about 4-5 hours and $150 in parts.

Search Hint: Try: secondary Tensioner and in the advanced search, select XJ8 + XJR models and you should get quite a cornucopia of choices of information on tensioners.

 

The trick is to know 3-char (or shorter) words are ignored, so don't look for V8 or 4.0 (etc).

 

Really? Wow that's really different from my experience. I helped a friend do this a couple months ago. We had a Jag technician there with all the special tools. We replaced the tensioners and guides plus all the associated gaskets. There were plenty of those involved. I think there was a water pump too. I have no idea what the parts cost was, there were a ton of them, but the 3 of us took 10 hours to finish with an hour for lunch. I remember the power steering pump being a real SOB.

 

If you don't here rattling noice during startup, idling and quick reving, then you should not be concerned yet.

 

Hear a noise reflected back at me, warm, when next to a wall or next to another vehicle, but sounds pretty low, underneath, ie like torque converter or front pump. Shes quiet at startup

 

dsetter was talking about uppers only.