Everything you say above is true.....for four cylinder engines. None of it is true regarding eight cylinder engines. The original AJ V8 was manufactured in 1996 when Ford owned Jaguar (but not yet Land Rover). It was designed and built right from the start as a Jaguar engine and was built originally on a special line at the mammoth Ford engine factory in Bridgend, Wales. Over the years many versions with different displacements from 3.0 to 4.2 liters were built, and besides Jaguar cars the engines were used in Land Rovers (after the 2000 purchase) and a few Aston Martins. A modified US built version was used in the Ford Thunderbird and Lincoln LS. Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata in 2008. At the same time an all new engine was being designed by Jaguar engineers. This was the 5.0 liter AJ 133, which was to be built at an all new plant (not a "plant-within-a-plant" which had been the case from 1996-2009) designed by Jaguar and originally built by Ford on vacant land adjacent to the Bridgend complex. The object of building "next door" was to save money on freight of components and parts deliveries, which components and parts were still shared to the greatest extent possible with the English Ford engines built at the big plant. (This is a different issue than the retail parts market to which Dave refers.) At first this new factory which opened in 2009 was owned by Ford and the workers were Ford employees, but the new factory was quickly sold to Jaguar Land Rover and the employees ever since have worked for JLR. Every AJ 133 (5L V-8) and AJ 126 (3L V-6 Super) engine has come out of this plant, and not one has been used in any vehicle not built by JLR. The Jaguar Bridgend plant is scheduled to close in 2020 (and will probably be sold back to Ford) and production of the AJ 126 V-6 will end as it will be replaced by a new inline 6 turbo built in the new Wolverhampton Ingenium plant now building the 4 cylinder engines. The fate of the 5L supercharged engine is not certain, but it will probably die in 2020 as well. As usual, the "general knowledge out there" is not very reliable unless you are talking about the four bangers. BTW, I wouldn't care if Ford did make the engine, I just like to be accurate.

@Swimref - thank you for the detailed explanation - is kindly appreciated :). Is a nice history lesson that is definitely good to know! This should reside somewhere on a Wikipedia article (unless is already there and I completely missed it). Would help with clearing things for others as well.

And sorry for derailing this thread @ColleenS - that was not my intention.

I have an invested interested as well (new to me XF with high millage and no history on if this upgrade was done yet on my car or not) and was trying to figure out all the options that we could use in order to find the "best" route.

I guess in the end we are stuck with either sourcing the parts and do the work our-self, cough up the cash to do the repair or move on to better things.

Also, see here re the new Ingenium straight 6 petrol: https://www.jaguarmagazine.com/jagua...petrol-engine/
So not only turbocharged but electric supercharged.

Would this kit work for our engines?

https://www.roverparts.com/Parts/TCK5030

Looks like it has key parts that are OEM. Much less expensive, and Atlantic British has proven to me to be a reputable seller of parts for our cars over the years.

And even with the special toolkit, the price is way lower:
https://www.roverparts.com/Parts/BJAG303

Not sure if you were asking me or the OP... my car just jumped a little above 180,000km (I think that's somewhere around 110,000 miles).
Engine pulls very well and strong... but there are some interesting noises that I wouldn't associate them with a chain... but then again I'm not familiar with this engine.
To me sounds a lot like either a vacuum leak... combined with something that I could swear are lifters noise... I know we don't have them, that's why I find it weird...
When accelerating, for a short period, you can hear a louder noise like a diesel engine (but that I thought is because of the direct injectors).

Anyway, I was planning to start a new thread on this to hear some opinions on what it might be and maybe get some videos in there.
I don't want to hijack this thread.

Regarding the chain noise... ALL chain timing cars will have this issue eventually. Chain will naturally stretch over time so contrary to the believe, chains are not forever.
Also, these oil actuated... actuators... are not the most reliable things ever. A lot of cars (even more reliable ones... like Hondas) have issues with them.

With the 5.0 V8 Jaguar engine, from my readings, things get more problematic because of their decision on using a soft metal for the chain tension guides.
Apparently the actuators are eating away at these guides in an alarming time :/...


I guess it all depends on the pitch of the chain... The price probably is not that expensive... as long as it fits.

That tool-set is actually a good deal I think - nice find!

As MrNewt mentioned, only if you have the INA chains (8.0mm pitch), as opposed to the Tsubaki chains (6.35mm pitch). It may well be possible to measure the chain pitch through the oil filler hole. There doesn't appear to be a way of identifying the chain type via VIN - both types were fitted during 2010-2012 model years.

I'm now almost certain based on weeks of studying part numbers and manuals that LR engines only had the 8.0mm pitch INA chaingear, but I could of course be wrong. I have yet to see anything suggesting that the LR 5.0 V8 engines ever had Tsubaki 6.35mm chains fitted.

Note that the problem with tensioners wearing down chain guides affecting 2010-2012 5.0 V8 engines affected both chaingear types, as they shared the same tensioner and chain guides - so the issue affected LR as well as Jaguar engines.

If you have the Tsubaki (6.35mm pitch) chaingear it's entirely possible to change to 8.0mm gear - I did it with my rebuild - but you need to replace all four VVTs, the crank sprocket, oil pump sprocket, and the auxiliary drive shaft as well as obviously chains, tensioners and guides. It can be done cheap ish using similar suppliers and sources as Atlantic British.

This toolkit can be found on eBay for under half that price. Probably made by the same factory in Guangzho Province :D

Still cheaper than what I can find locally for me :D

@davetibbs - maybe that is not entirely true!?

I've been on the look out for replacement parts on these engines for guides, chains and all that and I asked for clarification on either my chains are 8 or 6.35 pitch.
The guys that are specializing on Jaguar parts only, were not able to help me, but they went directly to Jaguar with my VIN number and asked what are the parts needed for my upgrade.
Jaguar came back and said for my VIN I need the 8mm chains, not 6.35mm.

Today I got back their reply and it looks like Jaguar recommends the following parts for replacement:

- C2Z22078 x2 - Chain primary
- C2Z28429 x1 - Guide chain
- C2Z28430 x1 - Guide chain
- C2Z28431 x2 - Blade chain
- C2Z28428 x2 - Tensioner-C

Total cost: $798 CAD (not US $ - not including shipping or taxes).
Primary chains are around 105CAD and the tensioner-c is around 160CAD (these seems to be the most expensive parts).

Not sure what in my statement is untrue as a result of that ;)

Your signature mentions your engine is a 2012 - as far as I can tell, they only used 6.35mm chains for a certain number of VINs, then went to 8.0mm only - your VIN might be after this point so they know yours is 8.0mm.

My apologies... I miss-read your reply :(...
For whatever reasons I read as "as far as your research went, all Jaguar were probably fitted with the 6.35mm and LR with the 8.00mm".

I guess I'm tired... tired and in desperate need of a vacation :(.

We live in Fort Worth and our independent shop replaced the chains, guides, tensioners and while apart also replaced water pump (which had started leaking) as well as cross-over pipe. Did it last year at about 63k miles for a lot less than the price quoted to the original poster. 26.5 hrs,+ $1407.39 parts... Quoted price sounds a little (no, make that a lot...) high.

Dave, why do you need to change anything related to the oil pump 3rd chain if you change from 6.35 to 8.0 on the main chains? The cam chains crankshaft gear is separate so can't you just leave the 3rd setup as is?

Strictly, you're correct here - you can leave the oil pump 3rd chain as is as it's driven off a different crank sprocket. However, at least one of these parts - maybe the chains? - are not available any more for the 6.35mm setup as revealed earlier in this thread. I changed all mine out as I needed a new oil pump anyway, and I got a brand new fuel pump cam for a good price off the 'bay. Another point of note is that to change the 3rd chain requires the removal of the transmission so you can drop the sump pan to gain access.

Interestingly enough, the 8.0mm 3rd chain crank sprocket (AJ813711) now runs at $434, which seems pretty insane given the front one (C2Z31438) is like fifty bucks.

When I did the chains on a RRS recently I bought the whole kit (8mm) from Amazon for <$200 and that sprocket was included. Didn't use it because I only changed the main chain stuff. Not sure why it should be so expensive from JLR.

My unscientific theory on parts prices is that they're based on a number of factors - of which the original cost of the part to JLR ends up being a very small one - along with the fact that Jaguar want to be seen as a "premium" brand (maybe more so than Land Rover, which is perhaps why identical parts are cheaper when ordered with LR part number rather than the Jaguar one). When it comes to examples of just insane prices, like that rear crank sprocket which is being sold for >$400 when the original parts cost can't have been any more than a dollar or two, I suspect it comes down to not much more than limited remaining parts in stock by Jaguar and them wanting to keep control over how many remain.

I remember when I was living in the UK years ago a common modification that a lot of people would do to various cars was to install a front splitter from a Seat hatchback (I forget which) because it was easy to modify to fit most cars with a similar sized front bumper, and was pretty cheap to buy from Seat dealers, but once word got out on the car forums and everyone started doing it, Seat found themselves with a problem as they'd only had a certain number of these splitters made to sell as replacement parts - I believe that European law requires car manufacturers to provide parts for 10 years after a car is purchased. In the end I believe the cost of the splitter ended up becoming eye-wateringly expensive as they tried to stop everyone buying it, and they maybe even went to the extent of requiring proof of ownership of the car (something that other small manufacturers do to avoid this same problem).

Obviously this isn't likely the case with the rear crank sprocket, being the (current) 8.0mm pitch, so my suspicion is either there was maybe a trend for dealers/rebuilders to change the 6.35mm chains to 8.0mm and they used up stock quicker than originally anticipated, or more likely is this is just a random pricing anomaly.

I would tow the car to then for that price. (and some great steak while I stayed the week)

Hi all,

Great thread so far and it got me thinking regarding my own 2011 XFR and if I have 8 mm or 6.35mm.

I found this link that show the difference in chain - A is 8mm pitch and B is 6.35mm pitch
​​https://f01.justanswer.com/crzydrvr0...or+tsubaki.pdf

Taking the oil cap off you can easily see what type of chain your engine has. Luckily mine is 8 mm if anything goes wrong.

Wanted to advise here incase someone else needs to know.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...d818bd0aac.jpg

Ok. Which is which ? Just says Tabayaki and NAI.

Interesting. I went to the basement for a quick look at my 2011 5.0 n/a. What I saw seems like the 8mm INA chain. It definitely doesn't look like the 6.35mm Tsubaki chain. Would you agree? Sorry for poor quality photo.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...ab304c7bc.jpeg