If you were low on oil, but never lost oil pressure, I don’t know how that could cause this problem. If you were so low you were sucking air, maybe? That’s a tough one, and can’t think of any direct relationship other than these modern engines with variable valve timing have so many small oil passages and fine screens to flow through that buildup of old crusty oil can easily clog stuff up. Long oil intervals will definitely increase varnish.

I did my first ever timing chain job on a 2007 F150 with 173k miles and the 5.4L known for phaser knocking and plenty of other problems. I used to change oil after at least 5,000 miles and wouldn’t always get to it until 7 or 8,000. After seeing all the cooked oil on the inside of that motor, I now change oil religiously after 3,000 miles and never more than 5,000.

 

Neat to see someone tearing into the AJV8. There’s a couple build threads on some Jaguar forums where guys have rebuilt them for various reasons, but it’s not very common to see people get deep in them.

I’m only familiar with VVT phaser failures on Ford 5.4L 3V. In those engines the failure of the VVT causes bad idle after running at high RPM because the failing phaser wouldn’t respond quickly enough to the drop in RPM. They otherwise run fine under constant load and want to say OK at startup. I always understood very brief knocking on startup to be indicative of failing timing chain tensioners driven by oil pressure. I’ll see if I can find some info to share in case it’s of use for your project.

edit: you must have replied while I was typing this up. I see you are well versed in the 5.4L… Preaching to the choir!

 

Haha, yep, I’ve done two 5.4L Fords, both in my family since mile 1. The wife still drives her 2012 Expedition that now has 208,000 miles and runs better than ever. I did the timing on hers at 180k. She had a broken guide with cold start chain slap on the timing cover. Her revised tensioners are ratchet style so they stay tight even after oil pressure bleeds off, similar to the LR3 primary tensioners.

This LR3 makes my third ever. I couldn’t wrap my head around the camshafts not having keys and timing marks to line up. I’ve read over various instructions about 30 times and watched every Jag or Rover timing video I could find. I think I have it together mentally. I’ll try to illustrate the things that were/are confusing to me while I put it back together.

Hopefully the parts will be here before the weekend.

 

Here’s what is sounded like when I first brought it home.

 

That's exactly it!

 

New phasers arrived. They’re date coded to October, 24th and 25th of 2009. Makes me wonder how many of these are available. The boxes did look a bit aged.

 

New crank seal is pressed into the front cover.


The red plastic piece works to both press the seal to its proper depth, and it keeps the inner diameter PTFE seal expanded until installation. I learned that these PTFE seals must be installed dry. Do not oil the seal for install.


It took soft pressing several times to ensure the seal was fully seated evenly around the opening.

 

This group slides onto the cam shafts as an assembly.

 

With the primary guides, chain, and tensioner in place, there’s a special tool that fits on the exhaust gear. With the crank and cams locked by their special tools, and the tensioner pins removed, the gears are effectively in time. The idea now is to lock the gears to the shafts. While holding the gears in place by applying counter clockwise force to the exhaust gear, tighten the intake gear bolt to 15 ft. lb. Then get your cheater bars out and tighten another 90 degrees.

I marked the socket with a paint pen so I could see when I got to 90 degrees. Oh yeah, be sure to use new cam bolts as they are torque to yield.

Then do the same on the exhaust gear.


LH side is locked in time.

 

Replace the seals on the VCT solenoid housing and install. These seals are Teflon split seals, not o-rings like the book says.


LH side done.