For some reason I seem to be having a hard time with the simplest of things tonight. Can someone look at this picture and tell me if this is 15 or 16 links between my cams, I want to make sure this is right before I button it up.

From this angle it looks like only 15 but from others it appears to be 16. Maybe it is because the cam marks are lower than the chain or maybe I am just crazy. This is on the passenger side by the way, of course the tougher one to maneuver in and out of there. Also I assume even with cam tensioner tool (which I broke the little cheap thing tonight), I will need to remove the cams to get the chain to move by a link?

 

Sorry, photobucket resized that to an unusable size, try this instead:

 

Looks like 15 to me....But the best way to ensure that the timing is set right is to ensure that the arrows on the cam caps nearest to the cam gear are in alignment with the grooves on the inside of the cam gear when the engine is at TDC. This way you know for sure that the timing is correct. If yyou are at TDC, you appear to have everything right from looking at the pic you posted.

 

Thank you, yes, I am at TDC with the locking pin installed. Every time I look at this I am just not sure, maybe because of the angle of the chain and the camera when I took the picture. I may loosen the intake cam once more and lift it to get the chain more level so I can count better,,,,,,,,,,, do those timing marks exactly align with a valley in the sprocket?

I might be just a bit paranoid but I like this car and don't want to screw it up, 187,000 miles or not :-)

thanks for looking,
Rick

 

rsborn, Is your pic of bank 1 (pass. side) or bank 2 (driver side). On my '00 2.7 the exhaust cam notch is slightly offset from the center of a tooth. The notches on intake cams differs btwn bank 1 & 2 on the 2.7 & likely does that on the 2.8 too. My pics on thread 16 https://www.audiforums.com/forum/aud...-174154/page2/ show the location of the cam notches on bank 2 relative to the gear teeth. Note that the exhaust notch is slightly off-center of a tooth, while the intake notch is centered with a tooth. Thread 46 shows bank 1 cam notches relative to the gear teeth. Exhaust notch offset the same, but intake notch is now centered in the valley. I can't imagine how anyone would get confused on how to count the chain rollers on these.
Came across this thread #57 & 59 that shows cam chain count.
https://www.audiforums.com/forum/aud...-119678/page6/ It's pic shows the difference btwn intake notches, & shows exhaust notches aligned with tooth, when I think they are slightly offset, away from intake. My Bentley doesn't point out this difference, and it shows pic that counts #1 roller as the one to the left of the exhaust notch.

A little hard to tell from your pic, but it appears to me that it's bank 2 (drivers side) because it appears the intake notch is centered on a tooth & not a valley. Assuming it is bank 2, to me I'd count that as 15, where # 1 roller is just to the left of the exhaust notch. I'm going thru this same issue now.

 

Thanks for the reply that was actually the passenger side. On the 2.8 (and probably the 2.7) the cam tensioner is at back on this side which sort of makes that side a nightmare.

I did end up getting a good count, this side as pretty much exactly 16 but you have to keep your eyes at the proper angle, the camera shot since it was from the center was very deceiving. I wrapped this part of the job today, everything looks good with timing, I just hope I don't end up leaking, a little worried about the crankshaft seal to be honest, cam seals were easy but getting the crank seal out and driven in was a bit of a pain.

I just keep saying to myself "you are saving almost 2k, it is worth it" :-D

The drivers side is most definitely 15.5 on my car, just like the instructions said.

Not sure at what part of the job you are on, but when you go to do the timing, I would put the plastic cover over the crank pulley as well as the harmonic balancer back on first. I found out the hard way that the crankshaft locking pin has just enough play to be a degree or so away from tdc. I had to re-pull the cam gears once I realized this since I was 1/8 inch away from tdc with the cam tool in place.

God I hope all this works, I will be pretty bummed if I have to have this towed somewhere.

 

rsborn, So is your driver's side chain count same as pic on thread 57. https://www.audiforums.com/forum/aud...-119678/page6/. Yeah it's good to be sure crank is on the mark when setting the timing. My crank lock bolt seemed to nail it right on the money with the crank pulley mark aligned to the plastic cover timing mark. The only thing that's worse than screwing the timing up the 1st time is having to do it a 2nd time. I know. 2nd time around for the timing disassembly for us while trying to fix timing misfire problems...thus my interest on chain count. I gather you don't have leaking oil at your cam tensioner gaskets (a common problem I found), as it didn't sound like you removed/replaced them too. Good luck to you.

 

I did not have leaking there but I replaced them anyway. I sort of wish I had left them alone but it seemed like a good idea at the time. On the list for this repair:
Timing Belt
Timing belt tensioner and arm
Water pump
Thermostat
Valve cover gasket
Cam tensioner gasket
Half moon plug
Crank seal
All cam seals
Serpentine belt and tensioner
Upper and lower radiator hoses (clips were completely rotted out)
Also replaced crankshaft bolt, and harmonic balancer bolts (those also were pretty rusty)

 

OK, wrapped this all up today, even got to fix my bumper from the previous owners encounter with a parking block (the car has the eibach package on it and it is very low).

Only one remaining issue is it overheated before I got it out of the garage, I suspect I did not purge the air out properly since it only took about 3 litres of coolant instead of 6 (or is it 8). I will mess with that tomorrow, either way I got my wife's jeep back into the garage which should save my sanity since it is near 0 degrees F tonight and she has been a bit perturbed by my little project.

Also should mention that there was much more valve noise that I would have liked before oil pressure built, if you are doing this I would definitely recommend assembly lube, I just used oil on the cams and I don't think it quite did as well as the assembly lube would have done.