Range Rover Camshaft Wear

by Dale Desprey

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 70,000 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.

From the OVLR newsletter, February, 1999