Removing Front Cover Dowel Pins

[listerdiesel]

Just for general information, and for those who haven't seen the engine front without the timing cover, here's a picture of our engine when we did the timing gear change.

http://www.stationary-engine.co.uk/Discoarticle/V8Gear4.jpg

Dowels at 11 O'Clock and 5 O'Clock approximately.

Peter

 

[Mike26]

Resurrecting this thread from the dead. Was there ever a final consensus on whether or not removing the dowel pins from the block and aligning the front timing cover using the bolts was acceptable?

I purchased a 4.6 w/o SAI out of a 2003 d2. The price was too good to pass up. Engine has 99,000 miles and is currently at the machine shop getting the full treatment.

 

[discostew]

I'd suggest also that if the sump joint is flush and the top bolt(s) on the water pump are OK, then you could probably get away without the dowels.

I sent a reminder email to LRUK Tech this morning.

Peter

I don't think I would hold your breath for an answer . This is a legal nightmare . They say yes the dowel pin location is a problem yet it does not extend your warranty ? I have no idea how that flew . But if this was my truck those dowels would hit the trash can .

 

[discostew]

I thought you've got one swapped in already...
Is Coyote engine related to Jag's 5.0 in any way?

I would also like to know the answer to this question . Also would like to ask about the oil burning issue Ford had with some of these engines .

 

[Mike26]

I don't think I would hold your breath for an answer . This is a legal nightmare . They say yes the dowel pin location is a problem yet it does not extend your warranty ? I have no idea how that flew . But if this was my truck those dowels would hit the trash can .

Yeah seeing how this thread is 4 years old, I'm going to guess land rover never got back to him. So has anyone removed the dowels on their front cover and run the engine with success? Any other solutions to the misalignment issues?

 

[turbodave]

http://www.discoweb.org/forums/showthread.php?t=55265

 

[discostew]

Yes . I removed the dowel in the left side one time because when the gasket was in place it was pushed out of position by that dowel . Never saw the truck again , so no problem I suppose .

 

[Mike26]

well the engine is back from the machine shop and after talking with the machinist, I think I'll leave the dowels in place and see how it goes. The oil pump gears appear to be in perfect shape when I took the engine apart and there was no scoring in the front timing cover to indicate it had ever previously had a broken gear. Maybe I'm lucky and this block is one of the good '03 4.6's... Maybe

 

[Kenso]

My '03 is in the death VIN range, when I pulled the front cover off recently the oil pump gears were in good shape surprisingly enough. 143k on the motor and oil pump never replaced prior as far as I know. Figured it made it this far with the dowels so I left both in place on reassembly. I did install a new front cover for other reasons (one of the water pump mounting points/bolt holes snapped off during disassembly).

 

[turbodave]

The easy way to check if you have the "death dowels" is to look at the position of the bolts (with them all would out a 1/4" or so with the cover sitting on the dowels. If the bolts are all biased to one side, that is your first clue that something is amiss.

 

[Dave03S]

Just to add to the "death range" of 03 VIN's...

I had that and it became apparent at 38k... Loud ticking on idle.

Still under factory warrantee I took the dealer up on their offer of a free replacement block. Turns out the outer oil pump ring was broken leading to low oil pressure and the tick.

40k later the oil pump in the factory replacement engine broke.

Moral of the story is that you can have a broken oil pump ring in a non "death range" vehicle.

Just so ya know, they brake whether or not they are in an 03 in the "range"