Mark: Hi, it's Mark Bossert. I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. Vancouver's best auto service experience. We're talking fixing cars. How are you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing very well.
Mark: So today's victim is a 2017 Land Rover Discovery. What was going on with this vehicle?
Bernie: This vehicle someone had just recently purchased the vehicle and was running very poorly. Very hard to start, ran rough. So he brought in for diagnosis and found 9 trouble codes stored in the vehicle computer and did some further diagnosis on that.
Mark: So what did you find?
Bernie: Well, probably the major code was a camshaft crankshaft timing correlation code, which usually indicates something wrong, with possibly a broken cam gear that's common on these vehicles. Basically that the cam timing was out of whack. So we kind of figured that was probably the first place to start with that particular code, because sometimes one major code like that will set everything else off.
Mark: All right, let's have a look at some pictures here. There's our vehicle.
Bernie: There's our vehicle. Nice shape. 137,000 kilometres. Looking really nice.
Mark: You mentioned something about this person had bought this vehicle used. Was it under, did they have a warranty of any kind?
Bernie: They did. They actually bought it with a very good warranty. So a lot of the repairs we're going to talk about were actually covered by the warranty. So it's a happy story.
Mark: Kind of.
Bernie: Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I mean they're still out some cash themselves, but the warranty company paid for a nice chunk of the job. So that's a good thing.
Mark: So what do we have here?
Bernie: So this is a picture of all the timing components that we replaced. There are two timing chains. One is the oil pump drive chain. That's that little chain at the top right. The main timing chain is the one on the bottom left. The other components are pretty much related to the main timing chain. You've got your guide rails sitting above the timing chain, the tensioner unit's at the top centre of the picture.
You've got two cam gears on the right, sort of the right hand side of the picture. And there's two bolts there. Those bolts actually hold the cam gears to the camshafts, there's a tensioner with a big springy thing on it, black piece, that's for the oil pump chain, that little chain, and then the sprocket on the left, that's the crankshaft sprocket, and there's a little round ring at the top, that is a thrust washer that goes on the crankshaft sprocket.
Mark: Surprisingly, perhaps one of the core pieces of the story here.
Bernie: Yes.
Mark: So what did you find?
Bernie: Yeah. So, I mean, when we took everything off we found that someone had been in here and done some work on this before. We have special alignment tools and you align the crankshaft and the camshafts up and the camshafts were way out of alignment. So somebody had most likely been in here didn't know what they were doing left out some of the thrust washers. Both the cam thrust washers were missing and one of the crank thrust washer was missing. And, and basically the valve timing was just way out of whack. So it's not surprising there's so many codes and the engine would barely run.
What we found if we go to the next picture, is this arrow is pointing to basically the broken cam gear. So this has variable valve timing and inside the variable valve timing gear, there's a lock mechanism and a spring, and that is basically broken off from the gear. This is common on these cars. It happens frequently.
Anyways, this is broken. So I'm not sure whether someone had just taken it apart, put it together, like back with this piece or what happened because this doesn't happen on a, if they'd replaced the gear, it certainly wouldn't have happened. So it's kind of hard to know. It's a bit of a puzzler, but definitely someone had been in there and done a pretty shoddy job.
Mark: Was this a result of them not putting the thrust washers in?
Bernie: No, not at all. That has nothing to do with it. I mean, the thrust washers are supposed to be there to hold things in place and it's really critical because these are all friction fit items that there's no key ways, nothing is locked in by a key way. So, you know, bolts are tightened to a specified torque and it just locks everything in place. But, you know, the thrust washers, they're critical in terms of making sure everything functions properly and doesn't slip. And they're always replaced when you do this job.
Mark: Sure. So we're looking at the back.
Bernie: Yeah. So we're looking at the back of one of the cam sprockets and inside there's where the thrust washer goes. So just a reference picture.
Mark: Interesting to notice that this says FOMO Co. What is that?
Bernie: It does. Well, it's so interesting working on Land Rovers because, you know, over the years there I can't remember when Ford got out of it. I think it was right around this era, but you know, there's still a lot of Ford Motor Company parts on these things. And you think sometimes these are expensive and you have to buy them through Land Rover. You think, oh, maybe you can just buy them through a Ford dealer, but you can't. They're either slightly different or they just don't sell them. Or for some reason, there's no catalog crossover because these engines look very similar to what you see in a number of Ford products too.
Mark: What do we have here?
Bernie: So here we're looking at the crankshaft sprocket. It's got two sprockets. One will drive the camshaft chain and the other one drives the oil pump chain. On the right hand side is one of the thrust washers that we took out of the vehicle. And of course we didn't take the second one out because it wasn't there, but there's two of those. That's a little ring on the right hand side.
Mark: So there was multiple thrust washers missing though, right?
Bernie: Three. Yeah. Three out of four.
Mark: Wow. Was that a big cause of the timing, can you speculate?
Bernie: Maybe, but I think it's probably just crappy workmanship. Someone who didn't know what they were doing when they were doing the work and they tried their best or, you know, didn't do things right. The timing cover's put on and it's got silicone on the cover as a sealer and you need to be very precise with the amount because you have oil passageways and things and someone had put way too much on it. And that's usually a sign too of someone who doesn't really know what they were doing. .
Mark: So what else did you have to replace on this vehicle?
Bernie: Well, the other thing we replaced was the spark plugs. They were kind of old, as you can see from these pictures. And if you notice on these spark plugs too, it says Ford on them as well. So so these are made by Ford for Land Rover. You can see these look pretty old and grungy. They probably got the full 137 Ks on them. So anyways. At the end of the day, all repaired, ran really nice. That's the vehicle sitting out front of the shop, ready for customer pickup. And yeah, it ran really well after. There was a recalibration of the cam timing that needs to be done on the scan tool. We did that and Yeah, it ran really well. We were kind of speculating, were there other things and, you know, there could have been some other items as well, but having done this, it took care of it. So good for the customer.
Mark: Another happy customer. So if you're looking for service for your Land Rover or Range Rover product, Jaguar product, they're all the same company. The people to see in Vancouver, BC are, it's clear, it's Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them online and book at pawlikautomotive.com, or you can call them at (604) 327-7112 to book your appointment. You have to book ahead. They're always busy all year long, always packed. Best auto repair in Vancouver. Thanks so much for watching and listening. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thanks Mark. Thanks for watching.
