I will ad the reason for pinning any part thats attached to another part is so it stays in place, once aluminum parts get hot they expand, and if the pieces are not held in a particular location then they can move, if the parts are supporting other parts then whole assemblies can move.
For example the 928 Porsche water pump is pinned to the front of the block, this so it wont move due to the stress of having to support a timing belt, even though the pump is held to the block with 13 bolts.
I still think that advising to remove the front cover pins altogether is setting your engine up for disaster, the cover will move once the engine warms up and then it will move due to the stresses placed upon it from the serp belt and the spinning fan.
This in turn will change the centering of the oil pump geortotr and then it will eventually fracture.
Good luck with your rebuild

 

Will Tillery - http://www.roverguy.com/
Tops to deal with.

 

hey man, if you think the pins should stay on a 03 engine fine... i dont think they need to, the cover doesnt move on mine and many others , and there are many engines without dowel pins ... but to each his own... to the OP good luck finding an engine

 

Probably should be moved to another thread but --

If it is inevitable that the pin placement causes the pump to fail - then why don't all of them fail? My '03 has 82k on it and (knock on wood) no problems. As stated earlier, '04s have been failing too. LRNA explained to me that only certain engines in the vin rage had the pin placement tooling problem and they cannot narrow it down further. Obviously if 04s outside the vin fail in the same way then LRNA is even wrong about that.

Is it really fair to advise everyone on these boards to stay away from the 03s in the vin range? Would be interesting to take a poll of all forum members with 03s and see how many of them failed/didn't fail and what their mileage is.

 

the reason why some fail and some dont is some oil pump gears have broken from the mis-alignment and some have not!!!

thus why i pulled the pins when i rebuilt teh motor.... no more problems

 

Try Paul Grant also. He is a bit more commucative than Will via email. Never had a problem with Will Tillery mind you, always got me what I needed for cheap.

paulgrant@me.com

 

How many miles have you put on the engine since you pulled the pins?

 

100 miles, but my engine went back under the knife to have the cam bearings replaced!!!. when its put back together it wont have pins either!!!

you dont need the pins at all, more so because the crank never touches the cover at all ... it touches a rubber spring loaded seal on the cover so there is no torsional movement of the cover. with the cover bolted to the block i could hit it with a hammer from the side and i bet my life and my rover it wouldnt move!!!!.

i would advise all 4.6 disco owners to pull the pins when their oil pump gear breaks up into 3 pieces, but like i said to each his own, i have dealt with the problem and i think i found the fix for me, my 383 lt1 didnt have pins to hold my front cover and i was making real power !!!!

 

Disco Mike - are you out there? What do you think of this solution?

If it truly works it might be a smart precautionary measure before the pump breaks. But as stated above, why didn't Land Rover think of it? Possible Answer: They'd have to do a massive service campaign to do the fix. Now they just pretend there isn't a problem and have only been out pennies to the few folks who actually threatened hard enough to wrangle a new engine out of them.

 

100 miles does not determine a fix. Thinking you found the fix for you and suggesting people do it is reckless. I realize forums are for people to talk things out, but this is rediculous. Poor advice to me..

You are getting flack from people because you haven't tested your theory. The crank does not ride on the front cover, but the water pump and fan are attached. The fan under load provides quite a bit of torsional load. That is reason enough for me to not suggest it. These are not LT1 engines either. Comparing apples to oranges.