2013 lr4 5.0l v8

My shop quoted me $5,300 to do the valve covers and cam shaft solenoid seals.

Engine is just leaking a lot of oil while parked. I’m going to do it myself will buy the valve cover kit. There seems to be plenty of resources on that job.

What I cannot get clarity on is where “all” the camshaft solenoids are located.

Any pointers or help generally on this job would be awesome!

 

I just replaced the valve covers on my 2016 SCV6 LR4. They were weeping for probably a year or more then once they finally started leaking down on the ground (and exhaust manifold heat shield) I knew I had to bite the bullet. I didnt mess with the timing chain as mine were tight at 115k miles.

Im happy to share any tips or answer any questions. Its definetly a project, but its not a hard job...its just a lot of steps and takes a while. You dont need a lift and only a couple special tools required, so anybody that can wrench can do it. It took me two weekends working a couple hours a day. I could have done in one weekend but I needed some parts. The book time for valve covers is like around 20hrs, and thats pretty legit. It's one of the only jobs ive ever done where the re-assembly takes 2x longer than the disassembly. Usually its the other way around but cleaning the valve cover surface, putting in new plugs, installing new injector seals, and torquing like 40+ bolts on the valve covers and supercharger, took a lot of time.

I started on a friday after work and started removing all the hoses, vacuum lines, wiring harnesses, air box and battery box for 1-2hrs to get myself oriented. Then the next morning I started working on the supercharger and had that out in maybe 2-3hrs. I could get it out in under 2hrs when doing it the next time and there are videos of guys having it out in 45 mins. I would categorize that as an "easy" job.

There are a couple good videos I can send you that I used. The workshop manual is also good to follow as well.

 

Thanks for the details. I think one additional challenge right now is the rear areas of the v8 block are VERY hard to reach.

Ive gotten stuck trying to get the rear most injector pulled with the puller tool. I really don’t want to have to start pulling out HVAC lines but they’re really blocking the valve covers and peripherals.

 

I was looking for some of the videos I used. Mine is a SCV6 so a bit easier back there. Most of the videos I have are for the SCV6 but I did find these for the V8. Did you take out the plastic covers on either side of the engine for the battery (left side) and brake boost and eco battery (right side) ? That was the trick that opened up a lot of space on mine. I first only removed the battery box but then wasnt able to get a torque wrench on the valve cover bolts in the back so removed the other side as well. If I had done that in the beginning it would have saved a bunch of hassle removing the injector and valve cover bolts on that side.

And did you remove the windshield wipers to get the cowling off? That wasnt required on mine, but I know thats what you need to do on the SCV8 L405.

 

Ah yea, so this guy also shows taking that windshield cowling off creates a lot of extra room for those back injectors.


While im at it, here are the other videos I watched, it was really useful to orient myself and see everyone's little tricks before I started. Sorry I should have posted earlier...

 

Awesome thanks for these. Lots of good viewpoints.

I did finally get the rear injector out. So hard clearing the brake fluid res. to line the puller tool up as you can see.

One thing that did help was actually removing the top O-ring on the Injector. This enabled the puller tool to seat on top of the injector much more easily.


View from top of brake reservoir looking down at rear injector port.

Removing injector O-ring

 

Do you have the tool for the injector seals?

I found a little water on the seal helped get it started, as well as a pen cap to press it evenly.

Are you replacing the cross overs while you are in there? I would be very gentle with the valve cover bolts. I sheered one.

 

Thanks for the replies.

So i’ve completed the entire job on both valve covers.

I reinstalled everything and the the battery, switched the electrics back on and gas started flowing down the battery side of the block

Looks like the rear most injector on that side isn’t sealing very well.

One thing I noticed, the fuel rail on the battery side of the engine had what seemed like multiple injector O-rings inside the ports when i removed it. It almost seemed like someone left them in there from a previous injector replacement BUt the injectors seemed original.

Can anyone confirm does that fuel rail normally have additional O-rings? I’m wondering because of this fuel leak once the system was pressurized. Or could it just be that the injectors need brand new rings themselves?

 

Hi - yuk that sucks. The injectors absolutely need new seals, o-rings and retaining clips before you reinstall. You cannot reuse the old ones as the teflon seals are pressure fit. Or you just need to buy new injectors. They also shouldn't have multiple 0-rings. There are 4 pieces in the injector rebuild kit:

- The white teflon seal at the tip.
- The grey rubber o-ring at the rear
- Under the 0-ring is a plastic ring thats maybe some type of spacer
- Then you have the metal retaining clip. I read these also need to be replaced as they keep tension on the rail and can cause a leak.

I also installed the injectors on the rails and put the whole assembly in together.

Can you send some photos and show where it's leaking.

 

It is finished……

Just wanting to thank everyone who chimed in and shared their input! You all definitely helped to better wrap my own head around the job after i’ve been putting it off for months.

Hard to say exactly how long it all took since it was broken up into several short stints but once you get familiar with all the different little pieces, fastener sizes and electrical connection locations, it’s pretty easy.

Main takeaways:

-Definitely need to have a few different options of socket extensions before starting. Including pivot/wobble options for reaching those rear valve cover bolts and others.

-Make sure you have backup sockets in the requisite sizes (I dropped a 10mm and a T30 torx bit into the engine bay and couldn’t find them. thank God I had backups)

-You don’t need to lift the car up at all to do the job.

-You can reuse injectors but definitely cannot reuse any injector seals or O-Rings. That was my only real fail. Tried to be cheap and paid the cost of an extra weekend to redo the work and also another shipping charge for the seal kits.

-When adding the nylon sleeves to the injector tips, I noticed you must actually force the injector ALL the way down into the two-sided seal shaper thingy (The metal cylinder thing used to shrink the nylon back down so the injector sits snug in the head.

-I wouldn’t recommend trying to reinstall the injectors using the puller tool. It sucks for this. Instead I grabbed a 1” square wooden dowel that was sitting around, cut it to about 14”, then drove a short flat screw into one end to press against the injector face while I and hammered the other end. This helped seat the injectors really nicely into the engine and give you plenty of clearance which the puller tool does not offer.

-You don’t need to try and remove the high pressure fuel line running down the bottom half of the engine block to get the valve cover off on that side, it can be gently bent out of the way to get the valve cover off but you may need a big flathead screwdriver to pry it off the tall bolt that holds it when initially loosing all the valve cover bolts.

-Once you’re on the downward side of the project, and starting to reinstall everything, I recommend getting just the fuel rails reinstalled along with the spark plugs, leave everything else uninstalled until you test that the fuel pressure holds with all the new seals (put battery back in and press ignition button without pressing brakes to initialize the fuel pumps). This will save time if you discover something wasn’t torqued properly or a seal is still bad and fuel starts leaking somewhere under full pressure.

I made this mistake, thought I did things perfectly and got absolutely everything reinstalled only to find two injectors leaking fuel once the fuel pump started up.