PLASTIC! There is a place for it - and there are places, where it should not be used. One of those places would be the engine compartment, which is a high heat environment - and this is, where we find heaps of plastic parts, including the cam covers made out of plastic.

Up to the moment when I drilled into the cam-covers of the X308 V8 and white dust came out, I was hoping that I am dealing with aluminium on the X308 at least - while I knew already that the V8 of the S-Type has plastic cam covers. But no such luck...

Cost saving, cost saving, cost saving - that is why they are made out of plastic, and as they do withstand the warranty period, the manufacturer has no issue with that. And the cash cows - a.k.a. "customers" - pays big bucks for a luxury car with plastic cam covers... - and when (not: "if") they fail after the warranty period, the "customers" have to fork out big money for very cheap replacement plastic parts (in case there is no such luck, that China made meanwhile illegal copies using a suitable materials instead - but in case of the cam-covers, I could not come across such parts).

Thus, as kind of a protest against this, I fixed the damaged-by-design (plastic!) cam-covers. I used old rusty nails to do so - note that those old rusty nails are made from a more noble material than the Jaguar cam covers... Sad that is.

As always: Don't hold me responsible, if you get inspired by my thread and cause damage or injury next...

X308, 3.2L, 1998/99, AJ27.

Word of caution: On both cam covers the upper rear bold can be removed from the cam cover, after opening the bolt. All other bolts however seem to be stuck to the cover - that was my impression. So I left them there, only to find out that they come falling out at their own time, when I cleaned the com covers - so do not loose them. The idea is that you carefully remove the bolts from the cam covers, after removing the cam covers from the engine, and then swap the gaskets, and then preposition the bolts (the gaskets hold them in place) BEFORE re-attaching the cam covers back onto the engine...


When I removed the cam cover, I noticed that the plastic lid came off the plastic cover, while the plastic cover was just lying around there on top of the camshafts and that "steel wool" was basically ready to fall out and do some serious damage - luckily, it held itself up there in the covers...


I looked at those cam covers in more detail and noticed that there were basically cracks (as in picture above) on many places, and on both cam covers. I pre-drilled holes (to be tight fit for my old nails) and I applied high temp silicone, hammered them in and cut the remainder off (see cam cover in background). Kind of "cross-stitch". Unsophisticated solution for unsophisticated material...


Then I used that high temp silicone to re-attach the steel-wool-cover. Small picture: Even two of the inserts (where the spark-plug-coil screws onto) simply came out - I put that also back into place with high temp silicone.


On the left side is the other cam-cover, which was not shown in the picture before: While that steel-wool-cover was still "just" hanging on, it was about to come off. So I had to fix both steel-wool-covers: After applying the silicone, I placed weights on it over night. Not beautiful, but functional, and no one will see that later...

The cam covers need a bit of gray silicone on two points (per cam cover). These point are where the timing cover meets the engine.

However, you probably will need a little bit more silicone, as all the holes for the bolts would have small bits and pieces missing. After you assembled everything and the engine runs and you see black/blue smoke in your engine compartment: That would be engine oil dripping out of the plastic-covers thru the new gasket onto the exhaust manifold - which means: Cover off again and more silicone...