No worries!

Indeed. No such issues with the older AJ16 engine! As nice as the 4.0 V8 is, especially with a blower, there are too many plastic bits on it for my liking.

You shouldn't need to remove any coolant hoses, there is enough room to carefully wriggle the cam covers off. Be careful to avoid knocking the small coolant pipe going to the top of the radiator, it is pretty fragile.

He must have done it by now so did he use the aluminium ones?

Carl Monroe Hi, I had a check engine light on, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the tensioners necessarily. Other than that the only symptom was the noise. Yes there is some slack in the tensioners when you first install them as they are dry. After the first few seconds of the engine running there was a noticeable drop in engine clatter, which was presumably due to the tensioner filling up with oil. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing. It really helps the channel out!

Metal on metal would wear the timing chain through, which would be worse. The problem with the old design was that the whole tensioner body was plastic. You have to have some plastic for the chain to rub against. It is common for timing chain guides to be part plastic, this is the friction material.

No you don’t have to have plastic for the chain to rub against, most tensioners I have seen on other cars are oil resistant bonded rubber, which seems to last for ever. Other questions I have is why a single roller chain, the only answer I can come up with is so that Jaguar can sell more parts and keep their Technicians busy. I could elaborate even further after having owned quite a few jags over the years, almost tempted to buy another but after researching what’s out there there’s no point in buying a great looking money pit.

Mitch Grooms I didn’t look at the guides in any great detail apart from poke a borescope down from the top. No doubt they really wanted replacing too, along with the primary tensioners and all the chains, but that is a really big job as you know, and the car went for breaking to parts before long anyway as the rest of the car was too rough to keep.

I totally understand..@@Biggles

Mitch Grooms Life is much simpler in XJR6 land!

you got that right, that is one strong as hell engine..@@Biggles

The objective at the time was to get the car running a little better and not have the engine grenade. It was borderline worth saving the car at all. It was an R1 XJR X308, but a bit rough all round.

@@Biggles oh well, you gave it a new lease of life for a while longer. is it still running three years on?

@@kennethtalbott2233 I sold it on about 3 months after this video. It did resurface again two years later for sale, looking a bit more sorted. I just looked up the vehicle details for the car and it is indeed still on the road. The work was not for nothing!

@@Biggles brilliant....

Yes, I'm afraid often it is necessary to replace all the timing gear to fix the problem fully. Sometimes if you catch the upper chain tensioners failing early, you can postpone the big job.

These are the upper tensioners and are commonly referred to as the secondary chain tensioners.

Just set engine to top dead centre.

Where is the dial on this car for zero in tdc? It seems like out if frame you were turning something towards the cabin.

@@tainchains It’s not quite so straightforward on an AJV8 since the engine isn’t timed to TDC. There are flats on the ends of the camshafts to which you can attached a locking tool and then you could lock the crank with a bolt through the bell housing inspection port. Remember though this is a redneck repair so I’m not following the correct procedure at all. You can’t lock the cams doing the job this way because you are lifting the cams up, hence the cable ties. There will always be some load on the valves doing the job my way, which is a risk. If you want to time up the engine perfect and be cautions you should be doing the whole job by the workshop manual which involves replacing all the chains, tensioners and guides from the front with the timing cover off and the cam sprockets removed. This video is not for you if you think you can lift the cams up without taking a risk..

it looked like you just turned the cam itself slightly to get the lobes off of the valves. Did you just do it by hand?

@@tainchains Everything is done by hand. You can wiggle the cam a little bit off the lobes, but the resistance isn’t that much. The main thing is that the camshafts are reseated exactly as they are removed.

This was at approx. 180 000 km. It did not fully cure the problem, I think it needed all new timing chains, tensioners and guides.

Hello. I think you are referring to the variable valve timing system. Not all XJ8s have variable valve timing. The XJR for example does not have the system, hence no wires. Unfortunately I do not have an XJ8 anymore so cannot source the wires if you do indeed have the system. Sorry. If someone cut them off, you might have bigger problems than just the wires.

Did you mark the position of everything like I did? There will always be a bit of tension reinstalling the cam, but maybe something slipped. At this stage it is either a matter of rechecking everything and potentially repositioning the cam (risky), or send the car to a professional mechanic. It is also worth checking all your electrical connections to make sure something else has not been disturbed.

Camshaft bearing caps 9-11 Nm. Secondary timing chain tensioner to head 10-14 Nm.

Unfortunately I don't know. By far the best way to find out for sure is to remove a cam cover and check yourself.

Damian Triana I used a 1/2 inch ratchet and suitably sized socket (sorry cannot remember the size now) on the crank pulley to rotate the engine.

Sorry, I don't know exactly when the design changed. If you have a car sold after the year 2000, it is most probably an AJ27 engine, which should be slightly better, but I think the tensioner design changed some years later. Unless it's the later 4.2 V8, you will always have to check the condition of the timing set in my opinion.

I agree that if at all possible, it’s much better to replace all the chains and tensioners. Time has passed and these are old cars now.

Jonas Axelsson There was a torque wrench off camera to finish things off. As I said in the description this job was very much NOT by the book. It will work though, but can be risky if you are not careful.

He used the German torque rating of "Gutentight"

His 'hillbilly wrenchin' is better than your instructional video on the matter. 🤡🤡