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I know it's probably listed somewhere in this very extensive thread, but I have the engine apart so could someone please tell me what the torque should be on the tensioner bolts and ALSO the cam cap bolts?
I think the other may even be worse. The guy who sold the car to me said he didn't think the tensioners needed replacing. haha
In the photo, am I seeing a large portion of the rectangular housing to the left side missing? Is the plunger supposed to be covered? If so, Where did the missing part end up?
The missing bits will be in the bottom of your crankcase and possibly caught up in the oil pickup screen.
If you drain the oil and take off the bottom crankcase cover, you can likely retrieve most, if not all of it.
The pickup screen is held on by a couple of bolts and comes off very easily. There may be bits caught up in the ridge around the perimeter if I recall correctly. Taking the pickup off to have a god look and clean it properly is a 10 minute job.
I cleaned mine out and found quite a bit of plastic rubbish in there. You can likely remove the pan without needing a new gasket, as it is a not paper or composite gasket. Just consult the manual for tightening sequence and torque settings. (it is a pretty low torque setting so if you don't get the actual number, don't go overboard on tightening) Sorry, I don't have it readily accessible right now.
I finished the work last night at about 1am, just putting on secondary tensioners. My work schedule simply won't allow me the time to replace the whole timing setup for some time. Since my wife just got the car, she really wants to drive it, so I at least did the secondary tensioners so I could have more peace of mind about her tooling around in her new Jag for the next couple of months. Maybe as a late Summer project I'll replace the rest of the timing components.
I NEVER found anything about the cam cap torque ratings. No one responded and I searched extensively online and found nothing. I probably over torqued them, but I needed to put the car back together. They are torqued somewhere between 22 and 27 ft. pounds but I did them that tight because they were remarkably difficult to loosen when I took them off. I hope there will be no future problems.
Engine runs very nice, timing seems perfect and engine seems to "purr" a little better (that could be my imagination since I'm envisioning those shiny aluminum tensioners in there now). I'm going to changer the oil on Tuesday, but it didn't appear to me that there were any missing parts to that tensioner; are you guys sure? I had no intention of dropping the oil pan.
As I said, the tensioners were in rough shape but appeared to be intact. I don't perceive there to be any plastic junk. Are you referring to plastic bits from elsewhere in the timing system that may have come loose?
I don't see any pieces missing. You may be okay. Mine looked about the same when I replaced them. Maybe I'm missing something. You're probably okay on the cam saddles. I'm not sure what the torque is, but somewhere around 25 ft lbs should be good. But letting your wife drive it ? I don't know ... ;^)
Oh wait, the second picture looks a lot worse. Some plastic missing there ?
The tensioner in the second picture came apart when I pulled it out, but it all appears to be there. Thanks for the response, especially about the cam cap bolts.
My wife called me at work to tell me her check engine light came on. I talked her through checking the codes and got p1384 twice and 1396 twice. I searched on here for info as much as I can while working, but found nothing conclusive. Please advise. I know her oil is near the lower mark; could that cause the v v t codes? Could the valve cover be loose? Did I mess something up Iinstalling the tensioner? It runs good, has run fine for two days following tensioner replacement. I have been adjusting torque on valve covers to eliminate leaks, which seemed to work.
I am a little stressed. I had to let her drive my BMW tonight. Any helpful comments would be greatly appreciated.
Hmmm ... Your car has a 1999 engine? Do you know if it's an AJ26 or an AJ27 ? The VVT is different between the AJ26 and AJ27. The AJ27 is truly variable and the AJ26 has a couple of different settings. I'm no expert, maybe someone will chime in, but it may be the ECU doesn't match the VVTs - maybe not, that could get ugly. In any event, I don't think it is dangerous to drive. XJRs don't have VVT at all. I have seen posts where changing the oil or upping the oil weight has helped in some cases.
Wow. Based on the pdf in that thread (which is awesome by the way) I have massively over torqued the cam cap bolts. Could that be the cause of the vvt codes coming up two days later?
Should I remove the covers again to loosen and re-torque the cam cap bolts?
Replaced the secondary tensioners this week with 3rd gen tensioners from Christophers, using the zip-tie method. 120000 miles on the car, but found out the engine is a replacement (thin black valve cover gaskets from 2000+ engines, plus an exchange product tag on the backside of the RH bank).
No noise beforehand, but glad I popped off the valve covers to at least take a look.
