I read an article by Jim Allen about premature wear of the camshaft on the
3.5 Land Rover engine. My Range Rover had just under 70000 miles on the
clock and I decided to follow his advice.
Parts:
Crane camshaft 900511
Elgin Lifters 81KP3971A (J.C. Whitney #)
New Buick 215 timing chain and gears 38KP0237U (J.C. Whitney #)
Vandervell Main bearings
Top and bottom gasket sets
I decided to leave the engine in situ. I started to undo everything,
belts, bolts, wires, vacuum lines. I moved the a/c condenser to one side.
I made sure the engine was at TDC.
On disassembly I discovered that the original camshaft, ETC6099 had some
visibly worn lobes. Some were visually misshapen. The main bearings were
worn. The inlet valves were gummed up. As expected, the timing chain was
stretched. There was one tooth missing on the plastic timing gear. There
was a bolt missing on the exhaust manifold.
Assembly was quite straightforward. I slid new bearings in. Carefully put
the new cam in with lots of cam lube. Drilled two small holes in front of
the valley as per Hardcastle’s (Tuning Rover V8 Engines) recommendation.
Initially, I did forget two things. The vacuum hose at the back of the
intake which caused an erratic idle. The oil sensor connection for the oil
pan, which caused the oil light to come on when cold, and in turn made me
sweat a bit. I static timed it to TDC, then advanced it slightly. I will
play with this further.
I think it was well worth doing. It has a nice rumble at idle. It
performed quite well on the trip to Greek Peak.
Dale Desprey
1988 Range Rover
Ottawa, Canada
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