Sorry for this long post in advance! I took my 2011 XF 5.0 to a local repair shop to have the valve cover gaskets replaced, not an inexpensive job to say the least. Unfortunately the mechanic had a great deal of trouble getting the injectors out, four were seized in the head ( I watched him work on one of the stuck injectors with at least a hundred whacks with the slide hammer tool without it budging). One ended up breaking off so far into the head leaving no way to get it out. Long story short it was going to cost over 10,000.00 to have the heads removed to tap out the remaining injectors on both sides not including any unforeseen parts needed so I decided to just have it towed home and try doing the job myself. Everything has gone quite well up until now. After having the heads rebuilt, I put both back on with no issues. I am finishing up with the timing set up and I have all the new guides, chains and tensioners torqued down to spec. The painted chain links matched up with both notches on the phasers and both black plastic guilds perfectly. Removed the camshaft tools, flex plate and flywheel alignment tools and turned the engine two revolutions as required but now the painted link are not lining up with their respective timing marks but both camshafts are lined up just fine. I have the downloaded repair manual and have watched several videos from others who have documented this type of repair to guide me through this process and now I'm stumped. Can anyone tell me why this would happen? Is there something I'm missing? Are the phasers bad? I do know when I first began to tear the engine down and after setting up all the alignment tools to put the engine in "safe mode" the painted chain links were off their marks by around an inch or so, I just thought the variable timing had maxed adjustments due to the fact the original aluminum guides both had the deep indentions as is common with the factory tensioner and the chains did have a fair amount of slack. The car did run good before with an exception of a few instances where the service code for camshaft position sensor came and went, I'm guessing the slack in both chains accounted for this issue. Hoping someone can offer some advice on how to proceed!!!

 

Once you turn the engine the links will never line up again. Well maybe after 1000 rotations or something. All to do with length of chain and gear spacing, ratios etc. Think about it. The only way the marks can be back in the same place is if the chain has gone completely round exactly one complete length. The crankshaft sprocket is very small and two turns is only a small number of chain links relatively. The only reason for turning the engine two turns is to make sure no pistons hit valves. On older simple engines they would line up again because socket ratios and chain lengths were simpler.