Consider yourself very lucky.


Xk8 I bought with the motor frozen. Took valve cover off, tensioner had failed and chain was broken.



What I found when I took the head off.

 

Out of curiosity; Was this limited to the head / valves, or did it have consequent lower end damage?

 

The valve put a hole in the piston. Here's a link on my repairing the damage.
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...ing+xk8+engine

 

Ouch. I really do consider myself lucky. I am baffled as to how there is no valve damage. We shall see if everything checks out once its back together.

 

Knowing this beauty survived just warmed my heart

 

Man, I hope you come to your senses and do the tensioner swap asap.
What a waste to drive a totally good car knowingly over the cliff like this.

 

Hope to see you are lucky indeed, after all work you did to revive this car you deserve to enjoy it a whole lot longer...

 

It's rusting out in a dozen different places, interior is on its last legs, transmission bangs going into 2nd gear, can't go 3 weeks without something new breaking, haven't had a quote for less than $2500 to do the tensioner swap..Has left me stranded twice in the last 3 months. The VDP has been a liability since Day 1...at some point you've gotta cut your losses, my friend.

 

Woohho, that's a whole lot worse than your beautiful picture reveals .

Let's hope the OP has better luck, he spent a lot of time to recover his car, and don't deserve to be beaten like this.

 

That may have been me, I do recall saying something along those lines fairly recently. I've never bought a car and been thinking about selling it at the same time, to me that would be crazy. LOL In my mind a car is bought and kept for a very long time. I always smile when I see an old guy driving round in a mint 1980's BMW or Audi, when manufacturers designed and marketed their car's for longevity.

I've just caught up with your engine issue, wow you were lucky there. I'm glad you caught that. When we dismantled my 4.0 engine, we found the plastic guides had begun to disintegrate. Any longer and I would've been looking at much bigger issues.

Keep Going, you're doing well.

 

Back on the road!! The job wasn't too bad to do. The passenger side tensioner was in bad shape as well. It was missing the lower plastic slider and had a huge crack down the side of it. I split the new chain apart like i would a bicycle chain (i actually used a modified bicycle chain tool) to loop it around the intake cam. Once back together it was just a matter of fitting the new tensioners and making sure to time it correctly. Missed on the first shot and had to remove the exhaust cam again to spin it one tooth. I installed the new plugs and got the valve covers back on. She fired right up with a little chain rattle, which quieted right down as soon as those new tensioners filled with oil. Check Engine Light was on as soon as it started, but i had realized that i had connected the battery before putting the intake/maf back on, so it stored a code for that. So sensative! Once i cleared the code, i took her for a spin and all is well. Phew! Drove it to work this morning as well.

So back to the airbag light! I will likely pull the drivers seat to mess with securing the controls. I will check all the seat connections and make sure they are clean. Otherwise, i am not sure how to narrow down the light without getting it scanned

 

Wow, what a turnaround from 10 days ago! This is great news! If you don't mind my asking, which method did you use to change the tensioners? So glad to see that you're back on the road!

 

Well Done, glad you got it sorted. It must be a great feeling to have her back in action.

 

Great!
Also proves these car are not complicated, can be fixed with bicycle tools, nice move .

 

Thanks all. I used the "zip tie method", which basically involves lifting the exhaust cam. I dont understand why people go through the trouble with the cam locking tools to change the tensioners. On the passenger side, it took me less than 10 minutes (once the valve cover was off) to zip tie the cam, unbolt the cam caps and tensioner, lift cam, slide out old tensioner and slide in new, modify the bolts about 3 threads shorter, and bolt everything back down. The caps are 9-11 Nm IIRC. Just use a pattern method when bring the cam caps back down so there is no big stress on any one portion of the cam. I have seen a big long I6 cam break in two. The side with the broken tensioner was the same method, just had to take an educated guess on the cam position.