after new plugs and cleaning your throttle body and part load breather, to prevent 'throwing off the sensors', meaning ECU will adapt over time to the dramatic change in fuel/air mixture, so skip the whole waiting game, and pull the negative cable on your battery, touch it to the postiive terminal and hold for about 3 sec, then reconnect. You're windows/radio/memory settings will have to be reprogrammed, but the ECU starts from scratch and should adapt immediately to the new data.

Be careful on tightening those little cam cover bolts, if you can't gauge what is it...6-8NM?, then buy a 1/4" torque wrench at harbor freight, otherwise you could end up with overtightened plastic covers n gaskets and result in the same oil leaks down the line.

 

Super busy at work so i didnt have time to order the parts yet.
Any suggestions on the gaskets? One brand better then the other?

Thanks alot guys for all your inputs so far..

 

Grrrr... Finally got the gaskets in and planed on working on the car today.. Crappy PA weather, it just had to rain on my only day off... I need a house with a garage...

 

Disaster...
Took the pasenger valve cover off this morning and what do i see??? A huge 1.5" of orange plastic just chilling next to the top gears!!! The tensioner on the passenger side looks good from what i can see!! Now i am freaking out because the code reader said missfiring 1-4.. Does this means that the tensioner on the driver side fell apart causing the cams to skip gears and cause shaking and misfire?? I deff. have a oil leak problem.. How do you clean the plug well from oil and junk anyway??

 

Rotate the engine so the flats on both the exhaust and intake camshafts(near the front) are face up. Put a straight edge over them...if they are not aligned then you have jumped one or more teeth.


To clean out the plug wells just remove the plugs and wipe them out with a rag.

 

Before you remove plugs, clean the wells by using a small 1/4" plastic hose taped to you vacuum cleaner. Or get a compressor and blow the stuff out. Do not remove the plug and force debris down into the combustion chamber in an attempt to clean the well.

It is highly unlikely, or IMO near impossible, for the secondary tension on the driver's side to have broken off and migrated to the passenger side. If the secondary on pass side looks whole and unbroken, then the plastic you see might be the primary guide on the same side which is of similar color and plastic.

Though the next obvious task would be to pull the drivers side cam cover.

 

I agree sucking the wells out with a vacuum is a good precaution. I was assuming that there was essentially just oil down there, since the wells are under a protective cover.

 

Re-checked the passenger tensioner again and noticed that one of the corners is missing(triangle) but it deff doesnt match the piece i found loose?? Just pulled the driver side cover off.. I couldnt see any damage on the tensioner.. I assume(wish) that the cams didnt skip a beat.. Even the damaged looks like it was still doing the job.. so hopefully it was only oil that was causing the misfire.. Time to research the tensioners!!
Took pics but i am still not able to upload any.. What are the requirements for uploads??

 

Looks like this is the top piece of the driver side that ended up on the passenger side???
I did notice that exhaust gear teeth were "black" which could mean that it got "hot" and melted through the plastic:

Missing the top??

Notice the color of the teeth:



Engine overall seemed very clean with out any obvious damage...

 

I think you got lucky. Most likely the leaky cover that let the oil into your plug wells is the cause of the rough running, and it made you look at the tensioners just in time. My old XK8 did the same thing.

As recomended check the flat spots of the cams to make sure they are still aligned, then see the faq here about replacing them with the lincoln parts.

As far as the gaskets, I just got them from the jaguar dealer on the XK8. To replace them on my XKR I got them through CarQuest, not a huge difference in price, but some. No problems with either, but the gaskets did change over the years, so make sure you get the rigt ones.

 

I already picked up Victor Reinz gaskets for valve cover from ebay.. They look pretty nice..
Now i MUST pick some brains here to see if I should do just the secondary tensioners or do the whole front end and change the pump and housing as well... I was debating on selling the car before this happened since i am having a baby in June but if i end up doing the whole front job i am deff keeping the GreenMonster...

 

This is especially important in your case. Rotate the engine using the center bolt of the harmonic balancer on the crankshaft.

If you are misalligned, you should get the special tools and not use the tie-wrap method and you should also consider replacing the secondary chain.

 

What is the mileage on the car?

 

Car has 105k.. I have no service records for it, and i didnt drive it for almost 4 months now.. NOOOO like...
I was worried when i looked the tensioners up, a lot of cars with issues were "orange" and looked pretty bad when they lifted the covers.. Other then oily plug holes mine looks great under the covers..

Thinking about starting a new tread since i diagnosed the car problem...

 

With that mileage, if I was keeping the car, I would do the primaries and guides also.

Normally failure at the primaries is not catastrophic, so of you do not do it and sell the car, you can have a clear conscience you are not selling someone a time bomb as long as you do the secondaries.

 

Definitely do the secondaries. Primaries are not so important and have a much lower failure rate. Your engine looks very clean and I would assume former owner(s) took very good care, or at least changed the oil often.

As for selling the car, you are asking the wrong set of people for their opinion on that topic.