Secondary tensioner catastrophic failure (Carnage pics!)

JaredI

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Have any of you seen a tensioner so utterly destroyed as this one? This is a '00 model with 180K. It was running perfect until coming home from work the other night. Drove about 40 miles and parked it for teardown. I was able to wiggle it out without removing the cam. I don't have the new parts in yet so I don't want to remove the cam just yet.

I expected the crack like everyone else shows. Imagine my shock!

Also would like opinions on if the cam has jumped a tooth. I think it has. The car also ran like it had a dead miss.
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Yes it has jumped time by one tooth.

Take note of the flats on the exhaust cam versus the intake cam. They are both not top flush at the same time as they should be.

Put a new secondary chain on.
Be sure to find all the disposed guide pieces.

GLWR
 
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Don't think so. I haven't been there yet although I have the parts on hand for my 01. Probably will be starting to work on it soon.
 
Thanks. My oil pan is beat to death, glad to have an excuse to swap it. Hope I can find it all. This thing is missing alot of pieces.
 
2nd GEN oil pan

Might be same as 1st GEN, can't be sure will I'm on the road. I have the 1st GEN shop manual on CD at home. Not with me.

Do note items has torq specs and tighten sequences .... I wouldn't wing it if I was you.

Gaskets leak because people don't adhere to torq or sequences and this fails the even clamping force .

Obviously you're pulling the cams at this point, note the torq and sequence. It's rather important.

It's out of time also. Another major headache.
 
Somehow I'm getting a bit of an obnoxious boner, to get at mine.

My 01 is just slightly loose. Ticks under medium load. I know it's the secondary chain n tentioners. I have the parts and locking tools. Just need time and now spring is here I should get to it.

Anything you can teach me, show me would be great.
 
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I will do a little better write up when i get back into it when the parts arrive
 
If you are not replacing all the chains, I have the new 4th gen metal tensionors and the chains with removable links from christopher's that I didnt need (double'd up doing tops only, then all kit). We can manage a good deal if so.
 
I wish I had known that before I ordered mine. I would've definitely done it. Sorry man
 
All in all, after doing this job, I'd have to say, its pretty easy. As long as nothing goes wrong.

I did the drivers side first, which is obviously more difficult. It wasn't bad though. Everything was easy to remove to make room. The cam came out and went back in easily, all the bolts went right back in too. All the coils looked new. I put in new spark plugs. The old ones were motorcraft with no evidence of oil or water in the plug wells, but evidence someone had done VCGs already. Putting the new VCGs in was tedious but easy. Torquing the cam was easy enough, the VCs are half torqued. I had to use a small ratchet so I just guessed. I recalibrated my hands every time I went back to the torque wrench so hopefully they aren't too far off.

The passenger side is where everything went sideways. Everything actually went great until it came time to reinstall the cam. Someone had monkeyed around with this side before. It had a good plastic tensioner in it. It had a broken bolt in the rear center of the VCG and the front cam cap upper bolt broke on the way back in.

After alot of cursing, totally removing the cam, a trip to town for the Easy-Out and a little bit of relocating items for getting a straight shot with the drill, I had them out. All the bolts had resistance when putting them in by hand whereas the drivers side ran all the way down easily so I chased every hole with a tap, it's M6x1 threads FYI. Stuck the cam back in and maaged to get it on the right tooth on the first shot. I replaced the front bolt with one that came from the old tensioner. I decided that the threads may have been stretched by a previous mechanic and that might be why they weren't exactly right, so I reinstalled the bolts with blue loctite. I hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

If you're using the cam tool none of this will be of issue to you.

Also, if you remove the cam, you'll probably want to snug up the middle cap and the one just to the rear of it first because those cam lobes are down and will be holding the cam up, I was afraid of getting the cam in a bind if I didn't snug them first and I mean snug, not torque :)

Don't be afraid to tackle this job, it's really not bad.

Good Luck,
Jared
 
please tell me you followed this order,

Apply clean engine oil to the camshaft journals,
the camshaft caps and the camshaft lobes prior to installing the camshafts.

s6x~us~en~file=n0006484.gif


- Hand-tighten.
- Tighten to 6 Nm (53 lb-in).
- Tighten an additional 90 degrees.

.
 
I did the hand tighten alternating between 11/12 15/16 and the rest of them finger-tightened after the tension was released (Those cam lobes were down, holding the cam out, hand tightening them compressed lifters and seated the cam)

After that I torqued to 6Nm following that pattern, but mirror imaged. I started alternating the wrong way. As in I did 11/12 15/16 13/14 19/10 17/18. I hadn't seen that diagram prior to the job but I knew to start in the middle and work out.

EDIT: I didn't apply clean oil to the cam. On the drivers side it was only out of place for literally 10 seconds and on the passenger side I had sprayed it with fluid film while it was out and standing in my vice.
 
yeah ok, inwards outwards, should be ok.

long time ago, was at a buddy's place when another dude pulled in with his civic and it was something overheating stinking from under the hood making all sorts of noises. Turns out he explained he just tightened everything down, completely out of order and didn't even use a torq wrench. Just burned up perfectly good cam.


Like said, I got to get at mine. 01 Lucy been sitting in the garage for too long.
Last of the firewood it out, just need to take her for a spin around the block, stretch the legs a bit and clean out the garage before I start opening it up.

Just needs Secondary's .... should be fun.

Appreciate your detailed write up. Hope you got all the little pieces out.
May want to run a few oil changes back to back within the month.
 
yeah ok, inwards outwards, should be ok.

long time ago, was at a buddy's place when another dude pulled in with his civic and it was something overheating stinking from under the hood making all sorts of noises. Turns out he explained he just tightened everything down, completely out of order and didn't even use a torq wrench. Just burned up perfectly good cam.


Like said, I got to get at mine. 01 Lucy been sitting in the garage for too long.
Last of the firewood it out, just need to take her for a spin around the block, stretch the legs a bit and clean out the garage before I start opening it up.

Just needs Secondary's .... should be fun.

Appreciate your detailed write up. Hope you got all the little pieces out.
May want to run a few oil changes back to back within the month.

I haven't dropped the pan yet. I ran it long enough to back it up and put it on the ramps. Easter holiday and bad weather are going to postpone the finishing touches for a few more days.
 
**UPDATE***

If you do this change the chains too. I didn't because I didn't consider it. Mine just chucked the factory one with very little warning. Just finished replacing it and fired her up.

She's dickered for good.

Advice? Opinions? Has a dead miss or two and a hell of a ticking. My plan of action as of now is to find a junkyard head and yank it complete and replace mine with my fingers crossed that the pistons don't have holes. I didn't feel any pressure coming out of the dipstick tube while it ran though so....
 
IMO if you get a shot at a decent 2002 motor I would replace the whole motor. You can look back at my posts on what we did to get the bad design timing chains up to near par. Even if you put new chains of the old design in, they are still poor design.

Benefit of the 2002 is its the right design with the right oil pump. The oil pump was the only thing I was not able to direct change. Wish I could have, but found out I would have had to pull the engine. Hope I can get by with good oil and Moly!
 
Might be easier to replace the whole engine anyway. My only hangup on it is that you never know the quality of a you-pull-it engine until its really too late. Anybody that isn't a you-pull-it yard is going to want to charge me 2 or 3 times as much.

I know where theres an S-Type sitting right now, unsure the year though. Has anyone swapped the Jag engine in? I know they're similar.
 
2002 was much more stable. I wish I had never let my 2002 lse go now. Anyhow, pull it yard should still have mileage info, if they are like Cali ones. That is a good indicator, and then just pulling the valve covers should give a somewhat safe inspection point to feel comfortable.

There is talk here about S type, but I think the answer is not worth the trouble in control system differences.
 
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