Nah, it sounds like they just gave you the price for not wanting to work on it.

There is nothing inhibiting the removal of the valve covers. You do have to remove the spark plug coils and a few bolts.

 

+1

They only have to fail once

Most who have done this job as PM report that the old tensioners were showing signs of failure. If you have the early gen 1 secondaries you may get a warning rattle before they let go. Or you may not.

 

I'm going to had the secondary tensioners replaced. Does the primary timing chain tensioner have issues too or have most of the issues been caused by the secondaries?

 

Have them replaced at the same time. Any other option is gambling.

 

The primary tensioners per se don't seem to give much trouble as they're not subject to the lateral forces that the secondaries are, although certainly replace them when you're that deep into a repair. The slipper guides, however, crack and split badly.

It is daunting that you need to dig so deep into a car with only 30K on the clock, but it is a well-documented and serious flaw. Do check the water pump at the same time as the originals on the early cars are another fail point.

On the big plus side, the style and sheer driving feel-good of these cars is priceless, IMO.

 

It only takes an hour more or so to do the primaries as well, why risk it.

 

Actually, it was the water pump that started all this. The water pump impeller broke into a few pieces, so I had a new all-metal pump and aluminum thermostat housing put on. I was surprised that a water pump failed at 30K miles, but it was 23 years old. So I started this thread to see what else I could do. Car is back at the shop now getting all fluids changed (trans, diff, brake...), fuel filter, suspension refresh (shocks and springs), and secondary tensioners replaced.

The shop did some digging into the tensioners and agreed that the secondaries were the real trouble spot and if/when the front end needs service I can do that primaries at that time. They discounted the tensioner replacement labor since I just paid them for the valve cover gaskets a few weeks ago, so I'm really not out that much.

 

My bad - I missed that in your first post. That is what the early pumps do

If you're sticking with just the secondaries for now, then at least get a borescope view of the primary guides while the cam covers are off and then decide. See this post from ltd:
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...2/#post2038399

Sounds like your indy is being very fair with you.