This weekend I plan to clean everything up including the gasket surfaces, and put everything back together. I'll have questions I'm sure, but I have one for now: the kit I got from Christopher's Foreign Car Parts contains a number of O-rings, and I can't see where all of them go.

Here's what I have identified, please tell me if there are more places for o-rings that I have not seen:

1. One o-ring inside the harmonic balancer
2. Three o-rings inside the timing cover where the supercharger tensioner or idler pulley bolts go through to the block
3. Two o-rings that go on the coolant crossover, where it bolts to the block

The kit also contains a new crankshaft seal, new harmonic balancer bolt, new chains, tensioners, sprockets, cam cover gaskets, spark plug recess gaskets, and the timing cover gaskets. I'm ok with all of those. But there are several more o-rings in the kit that I can find a place for. What am I missing? Maybe they're just extras....6 came in the bag but I only need 3, that kind of thing. I'm fine with that, but I'd like to make sure I'm not overlooking something.

Thanks again.

 

Pictures of the extra o rings that you’re not sure of might help.

 

I wonder if it’s a universal
kit including the o-rings for the na engine variable valve timing which you don’t need.

 

I believe it is a universal kit now that you say it. I have figured out that a couple of the packages say v v t on them but it looked like WT which confused me. My car doesn’t have variable valve timing so I didn’t think of that at first, but it’s a universal kit.

Still, here is a picture of two o-rings that I haven’t identified. Thanks for the suggestion to post a picture, Addicted.

 

Yeah, that’s the VVT o rings for the naturally aspirated AJ26. Those would be located on top of the timing cover just in front of the intake camshafts.

 

Ok thanks. I have the chains, sprockets, and tensioners loosely installed in the car. It went fine. All the bolts are loose, just mocking everything up for now.

A couple more questions.

1. The instructions and workshop manual tell me to install temporary wedges between the primary tensioners and the chain guide, presumably to take up slack in the chains. The kit contains the wedges. But aren’t I taking up the slack already when I tug on the sprocket holding tool when I tighten the sprockets? I understand that I’ll use the tool to make the driven side of the chain tight, and tighten the sprockets in place while holding the chain tight with the tool. Why install the wedges? Why do I care if the slack side has slack in it right now? I like to understand what I’m doing vs just blindly doing it, so I apologize if this is a simple question. I don’t want to miss something important.

2. At what point do I remove the retaining pins from the tensioners? I assume after I tug the slack out of the driving side of the chains, and tighten the sprockets? I assume the tensioners will expand when I remove those retainers that look like long thumb tacks. That will keep the chains tight AFTER I’ve gotten the chains tight with the sprocket tool and tightened the sprockets, right?

 

If you have all the chains on loosely and all the intake and exhaust sprockets NOT TIGHTENED but moveable, have the wedges in place and pull the pins for the primary timing chain tensioners so the primary chains are not slack. The wedges are there to mimic pressure on the guides much like oil pressure built up on the inside of the primary tensioners. After that, DON’T pull the wedges out just yet. Tighten the intake camshaft sprockets. Pull the pins for the secondary tensioners, support the exhaust camshaft sprockets gently but firmly counter clockwise while tightening the exhaust camshaft bolts. Pull the wedges, flex plate pin and both bank camshaft hold downs off the engine. Manually rotate the engine clockwise (while looking front to rear of vehicle) 2 full revolutions and put the flex plate pin back in. Rest the camshaft hold down tools on top of the cam flats and see where you’re at with it. One thing to take into consideration, it may not be 100% dead on because you don’t have built up oil pressure on those tensioners which put pressure on the chains and hence the sprockets being a little off. What I have done in the past whenever I wasn’t sure about fine tuning the timing chains was pull all the spark plugs out, pull the fuel pump relay and crank the engine over to build up oil pressure until the oil pressure light goes off. Obviously make sure all the cam hold downs, pins, wedges, tools, etc are off the engine prior to doing this procedure. If you don’t like something, you can still go back and adjust it

 

Ok I think that all makes sense. My next question was going to be whether the primary tensioners are hydraulic. Fiddling around with the old ones, that was the only conclusion I could reach. So, when first starting the car when I’m all done, won’t the primary tensioners be slack? I assume they’ll pressure up, but is it ok that they’re not pressured up for a bit? Won’t the chains slap around for a while? I suppose it must be ok.

The secondary tensioners are spring loaded, not hydraulic, right?

Edited to add: if the timing does need to be fine tuned, can I get to the cam sprocket bolts with the timing cover in place? How likely is it that the timing will be off a little bit?

Also: should I use blue loctite on any or all of the bolts related to the timing chains or tensioners? What about the bolts that hold the sprockets? The book does not mention loctite, but there was a tube of it in the kit I bought. What do you normally suggest?

Thanks again

 

All 4 of those tensioners are both spring loaded and hydraulically actuated. When the engine is off, the springs hold tension on the chains. Don’t worry about slapping chains. When you manually rotate the engine 2 full revolutions, the primary tensioners will ratchet outwards to put more force on the chains which takes more slack out. If you’re still concerned about any slop, crank the engine over as stated in my previous post assuming you haven’t put the timing cover back on yet.

I personally don’t use loctite on any of those bolts. The new harmonic balancer bolt you got already has loctite on it. I use compressed air to blow out any debris on the inside of the crankshaft threads prior to putting the balancer bolt in.

 

Take a look at this picture. See the little thing that looks like a chain link under the red retainer pin? Is that thing supposed to stay on? I pulled the red retainer out of the other tensioner and lightly wiggled the chain link thing with a needle nose. It seems to want to stay put. Should it stay put or do I need to rip it out? Obviously don’t want it falling off in there if I was supposed to remove it.

Many thanks!

 

The chain link will stay on that tensioner. After that pin is out, it will move.

 

Ok thanks. I’ll leave the chain link things alone. I now see what they do.

New problem. The passenger side exhaust camshaft rotates a milli-smidge when I loosen the holding tool. It causes the secondary chain to become sloppy loose on the driven side. This is not true on the drivers side. Those cams don’t move and the chain remains tight.

Here’s a picture of the slop on the driven side of the chain on the passenger side.

Edit: maybe I just need to rotate the engine a couple rounds now, and recheck everything? Make everything settle in place.

 

Rotate the engine. Broken record here.
😂😂

Also, the oil pressure will push the tensioners out and make it more “on time”. The valve springs and cam lobe position is what moves the cams out of time when it’s not running.

 

Thanks for the confirmation, and I appreciate your patience! Everything seems right to me now. I have removed the timing kit and I’m ready to reinstall the cover. Before I can do that, I have a new o-ring problem: the kit only contains TWO o-rings for the pulley bracket pass-through bolts. Either that or I misplaced one of them somehow, which is possible. Either way, I have to find one because I don’t want to install one of the old ones. In the meantime, I soda blasted the cover and the pulleys. Here are some pictures:

 

Very nice! If you have some rtv and one of the old o rings, I would just do that instead of hunting down either the lost one or another new one but, it’s your car.

 

Finally getting back to my project and I have a new problem. I’m installing the harmonic balancer, and I cannot keep the crankshaft from turning as I tighten the bolt inside the balancer. The crank turns inside the balancer. I know that once it starts to get tight, there will be enough friction and the holding tool will work. But I can’t get that far. The crank is turning inside the pulley.

What am I doing wrong? The v shaped wedge is in place but I can’t get the bolt tight enough before the crank starts to turn.

 

Ok I figured it out. Borrowed an air ratchet. I backed the bolt out, used the old bolt, air ratchet, and carb cleaner to clean the threads out better, then blew it out and zinged it together with the air ratchet and the new bolt. I torqued it to specs, and everything seems good!

 

If you had the plugs out, that could’ve made the engine turn over easily.

 

I didn’t have the plugs out, but I think there were two issues. The new bolt had loctite already on it, but it seems really dry and brittle. When I tried to thread it in, it seemed kind of bind-y. The other problem was that I don’t think I had the crank threads clean enough. I sprayed the crank threads with kroil and ran the old bolt in and out a bunch of times, spraying more each time. Then I sprayed it with carb cleaner and ran the bolt in and out a few times, spraying carb cleaner each time. Then I blew it out with air for quite a while to dry it out. I used a wire wheel to remove the loctite off the new bolt, and put on new blue loctite. It threaded on easy and everything looked good. 275 foot pounds is a manly task, but I got it.

Here’s what it looks like at the moment:

 

Woohoo!

It runs like a champ! Not sure why I can’t upload the video but oh well. There used to be a light tick-tick-tick sound that I thought was the injectors. No more tick sound now, which means it was the shattered guides. I got lucky - I think I was 20 seconds from a major engine disaster.

What a fun project. I like learning and doing stuff like this. A huge thank you to the forum and to those who helped with all my -probably simple- questions!