I had a slow leak in my right timing chain tensioner and decided to get it fixed. Ordered the o-rngs from jaguar but forgot the gasket. Took off the tensioner, cleaned it up replaced o-rings and in leu of the gasket I just tried Blue RTV, didnt work and the leak was worse than before. So I went to the autoparts store and got some sheet gasket.

I cut out a gasket for it and it fit and looked very good, I cleaned everything up real nice and applied Permatex gasket sealer to the contact faces. Put her all back together and warmed it up and I was leak free. Drove to town and had to make an emergincy stop at pepboys for oil as I had dumped it all out again from the tensioner.

Tried the same thing again, this time sanding the tensioner gasket face with 1000 grit to make sure all oils, and anything that might be leftover etc were off. Cleaned it real good and drove 80 miles, I was about 5 miles from my destination and I saw my oil pressure start going to hell, pop the hood, once again still dumping oil.

It leaks from the bottom of the tensioner, the top seems to keep a seal. I flipped the tensioner housing to see if that made a difference and it did not. I guess I will try and order the correct gasket from jaguar and see if that fixes it.

Any ideas or is there something I am missing?

 

Is this the "old style" tentioner, with the external locking plate and 2 bolts of different lengths??. These style could leak out the end I think, due to its construction. Not seen one of these "old style" in the flesh, only in pictures.

I have an X300 and it has the "update" tentioner, which is a sealed unit (externally), and the daughters XJ40 3.6ltr has the same unit, and NO oil leaks. I did NOT get a gasket with the new unit for mine, the "update" failed, only the o/ring, and I simply smeared RTV on the face of the tentioner, and it has never leaked.

It is fed by oil from the front exhaust cam shaft bearing, and the gasket stops the oil coming out to mess things up, and the o/ring stops the oil simply squirting into the timing cover, and not pressurizing the tentioner. Unless the face of the cylinder head, and/or the face of the tentioner is "deformed" it really should seal.

You are loosing a LOT of oil very quickly, so I hope my scribblings help a little bit.

 

Thanks, yeah I have the old style with 2 different bolts. I meant to update the thread but I finally went to Jaguar and got the proper gasket and it worked. Now my valve cover is leaking but only a small amount so not to crazy about that.

 

I had the same problem . I found the bolts were bottomed out, and would not tighten so I used spring washers under the bolt heads to put more preasure on the gasgut Also put sealer on the bolts.Drag racing must be one of the most expensive hobbies on the Planet! A single barrel of fuel is over $750.00 US, and here is what you get from that :
TOP FUEL ACCELERATION PUT INTO PERSPECTIVE
* One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower (10,000 HP) than the first 5 rows at the Daytona 500.
* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1.2-1.5 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate, producing 25% less energy.
* A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger.
* With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.

* At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane, the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.
* Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen dissociated from atmospheric water vapour by the searing exhaust gases.
* Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.
* If the spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.
* Dragsters reach over 300 MPH before you have completed reading this sentence.
0 to 100 MPH in .8 seconds (the first 60 feet of the run)
0 to 200 MPH in 2.2 seconds (the first 350 feet of the run)
* To exceed 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4 G's. To reach 200 MPH well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8 G's.
6 g-forces at the starting line (nothing accelerates faster on land)
6 negative g-forces upon deployment of twin chutes at 300 MPH. A Top Fuel Dragster accelerates quicker than any other land vehicle on earth and is quicker than a jet fighter - quicker than the space shuttle.
* Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
* The engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load, including the burnout.
* The redline is actually relatively high at 9500 RPM.
* The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.420 seconds for the quarter-mile. The top speed record is 337.58 MPH as measured over the last 66' of the run.
The bottom line: Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and nothing blows up, each run costs an estimated $1,000 per second.
The picture shows what 10,000 horsepower does to a top fuel tyre at launch.