Greetings all. Five months ago I acquired this ‘00 coupe from a friend. I’ve always loved this car, and when it lost a secondary timing chain tensioner on the left bank, he decided he wanted to part with it. It became a weekend winter project, and I decided to take my time and do it exactly as I wanted. That meant replacing anything that could possibly be an issue in the reasonable future, and being my methodical self. If it was rubber, I replaced it. The car has right at 80,000 miles on it, and is in immaculate shape. It originally came from California, where it stayed for most of its life. It has been garage kept, driven sparingly, and has not seen rain in at least 15 years. Complete with all keys, books, service history, etc.. making it a project definitely work taking on. So, here’s a dump of pictures with some comments thrown in here and there. Enjoy!Greetings all. Five months ago I acquired this ‘00 coupe from a friend. I’ve always loved this car, and when it lost a secondary timing chain tensioner on the left bank, he decided he wanted to part with it. It became a weekend winter project, and I decided to take my time and do it exactly as I wanted. That meant replacing anything that could possibly be an issue in the reasonable future, and being my methodical self. If it was rubber, I replaced it. The car has right at 80,000 miles on it, and is in immaculate shape. It originally came from California, where it stayed for most of its life. It has been garage kept, driven sparingly, and has not seen rain in at least 15 years. Complete with all keys, books, service history, etc.. making it a project definitely work taking on. So, here’s a dump of pictures with some comments thrown in here and there. Enjoy!









Another cat following me home.











Engine bay pre tear down





Intake and cam covers off





Broken breather pipe





Thermostat tower hose swollen







Truly a fraction of the parts that I ended up buying.









Front cover off, old timing components exposed. Many cracks in guides, left bank secondary tensioner grenaded.





Oh snap







Hello valves





My 3/4” drive, 4’ breaker bar made breaking the crank bolt loose pretty easy work.





Heads off, getting ready for machine shop







Oops





Two new valves from Jag.





Along with 32 oem valve seals.





Back from machine shop! Full valve job, flow test, about 20 new shims. Check out perfect.





Exhaust bolts pre wire-wheeling





After cleaning. All hardware was extensively wire wheeled.





Coolant tower bolts before



and after.





Water pump bolts before



And after





Exhaust bolt sleeves before and after





I pressed in new idler bearings while I had everything off.





Cleaning everything with degreaser

















Heads on





Valves numbered after lashing





Intake gaskets replaced







Timing cover cleaned up





Intake back on

[youtube]https://youtu.be/el8qOURcqdA[/youtube]


Coming to life



Yours truly.

 

Congrats! Great Job.

 

Well done....

 

Great job.

Well done. Far more capable DIY than most. Very impressed

 

well done - wishing many happy motoring miles!!

 

Awesome man! Just to ask, apart from your time, how much did it cost?

 

Nice job. I can see that you spent quite a bit of time cleaning and making sure that everything was just right. Even the hardware cleaned up very well. I hope you get many years and miles out of it.

 

Brilliant job! Inspirational. . .

 

Great job. Many (like your friend) would have given up on it or scrapped it.

Graham

 

Brilliant job Well sorted and a clean execution nice attention to detail.. congrats!

 

Beautiful car and great work. Very well done!

 

Thank you all. Now that it's over it really was a fun project. It's been years since I've built an engine (even though this wasn't a full rebuild) and I'd missed doing that kind of work. (See x-type project from many moons ago)
She's still running great and gets driven about once a week weather permitting, and just got a new set of P Zeros.
Cost wise, I try not to think about it. Haha. It could have been done for much cheaper (buying used heads, reusing everything I could), but I wasn't looking to be cheap. The head work was $850, valve shims $300, and I'd estimate about $1,700 in hoses, gaskets, filters, belt, spark plugs, etc. Even at my price, dealer sourced parts aren't cheap.

 

Kinda what I figured as far as parts and head work spend. I figured it would be nice to see in numbers in case someone thinks "hmmm this shouldn't be TOO expensive" and tears into it and then gets a sticker shock. Of course that could mean another cheap Jag on the market!

 

Let me know if you come across one of those.

 

Great job. Thanks for the pics. I did the same to my '99 Covert last year. If you have some experience with engines and follow the How to videos on the forum which I did you'll do fine. I didn't have any problems with the heads so I just replaced everything else. Chains, guides, tensioners, water pump etc. It cost me just under $1000. The only tools I would strongly suggest buying or barrowing would be the hold downs for the cam shafts and the bar that holds the crank shaft when removing and installing the crank bolt. First time dealing with a dual cam engine. Had a lot of fun and learned a lot.
Drive Safe
Mitch