5.0 Questions
 

Good afternoon/morning

Maybe someone knows me off the RR.net forum..?

I've recently started thinking about getting an inexpensive sedan for myself and thought of the X250. While I know quite a lot about the AJ133 in the Land Rover application, I am unsure of identical issues in the Jag platform.

In the Land Rover application I know about timing chains, and cooling systems. My knowledge starting after I dished out $29,000 to Howard Orloff Chicago for a new engine in my 2011 Range Rover at around 70k miles when the timing chains let go, and I keep a spare water pump and associated plastic pipings on a shelf to install if I ever notice a wee bit of coolant missing.

So back to my question. Does the X250 eat through timing chains like the RRs do? This would be MY2010-2013 vehicles.

If it does, how many of you have had them replaced?

Cheers,

Rob

The issue does exist in roughly the same range of Jaguar 5.0 engines and has been mentioned in this forum.

Yes, it does - the same chain guides/tensioners were fitted to 2010-2012 5.0 XF/K/Js - the metal on the back of the chain guide blades was softer than the metal of the tensioner pin, and it wore an indentation into the back of the guide, resulting in lowered chain tension. It's worth noting that the engines in the Jags are identical to the Range Rovers except for the sump design.

I ended up having to rebuild my 5.0 S/C engine (rebuild thread here) and found burrs in the aluminum head/block around where the chain runs through, where tension was presumably so slack the chains were able to rattle during startup or maybe even idle. I also had a significant hole worn into the back of the timing guide blades.

There is an additional complication with the Jaguar engines that I don't think exists with the Range Rover, whereby for the first couple of model years there were two pitches of timing gear fitted: 6.35mm and 8.0mm, and I don't think it's possible to tell by VIN which you have - as far as I can tell, the RR engines only had 8.0mm chains and timing gear fitted. After (I think) 2012, all chains and gear are 8.0mm. However, there were only limited numbers of 6.35mm chains, VVTS, and sprockets made, and the parts prices reflect this accordingly - someone recently posted a service bill where they were quoted for replacement of the fuel pump cam during a timing chain change and I suspect this is because JLR have exhausted their supply of 6.35mm auxilliary (i.e. fuel and oil pump drive) and are now advising that all replacements require an upgrade to the 8.0mm chains (which requires a new fuel pump cam and new crank/oil pump sprockets). As part of my engine rebuild I swapped out all chains, VVTs, sprockets etc for 8.0mm.

Also another member started a thread here to track timing chain replacement but this was very recent so not a lot of data. I know this issue has been known about for a while in the Land Rover world, but not so much in the Jaguar world until more recently where people like me and others have been tearing down the engines.

Also see this thread here for more info and photos of what happened to my engine.

Dave - do "we" know when the engines started coming with the modified chain guides?

What I would like to know is "Do all 2010-2013 XF 5.0s have the gen 1 guides, or is it just the 10-12 5.0s?"

Or is it at some point in the 2013 VIN line that the gen 2 guides show up?

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that one - or at least, I haven't been able to find this information out. The service manual just states that if you don't have the hardened disc of metal on the back of your guides then you need to replace them, but doesn't give any idea of years affected.

There was never a TSB released with affected VINs for the Jaguar engine like there was for the Range Rovers (see the thread I linked above for this TSB) - the years given for the RRs was 2010-2012 so we have to assume that those dates also correspond to Jaguar since the engines are the same (although obviously we can't rely on that being the case), and you'd hope that as soon as they knew there was a problem they'd stop fitting engines with the flawed guides. I think only JLR would have this information.

>I have a 2013 XFR and I confirmed with my dealer that my car has the updated 8mm timing chains
I wonder how could the dealer could know that? Do you think there is a special super-secret "insider" TSB?
Not being snarky, just really curious...
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You dreamed of a big star -
He played a mean guitar -
He loved to drive his Jaguar...

So welcome to the machine

Yep, most probably the VIN - when I placed my order for the chains, the actual dealer had no clue what chains my year and VIN is using.
They had to send the request to Jaguar and they replied back that for my VIN I needed the 8mm chains. Mine is a 2012 XF.