yotagoat

Hi. A couple of months ago I was driving along and my timing chain slipped/jumped. I made it home (5 miles?) with depleted compression/power and a ticking engine. I'm guessing this was caused by pieces of the chain guide interferring with the oil flow to the pump, resulting in lifter noise. I'm debating whether to just replace the timing kit or give it a full overhaul. If I go with the timing chain only, I guess I would need to pull off the oil pan and clean it out? The truck is an '86 1-Ton, 2.4, 22RE EFI. Thanks.

rdlsz24

Hard to say whether to replace the chain or overhaul. How many miles are on the engine? As far as just replacing the timing chain and guides, it's not too big of a deal and not all that expensive if you do it yourself. Either route you choose, you will definately need to drop the oil pan to clean out the broken guides.

Rob

yotagoat

Rob, she has a healthy 270k on her. If she wasn't so good about using oil, I'd charge ahead and overhaul. My main concern, I suppose, is the possibility of a bent valve. In that event, I would surely be able to tell when I fired her up, yes?

Swansen

well, you have to take apart the whole engine to do the timing chain, so you might as well do an overhaul. That said i was debating whether just to take the engine out and do it and now i wish i would have, would have made taking it apart a lot easier, i'm actually in the middle on replacing the timing chain now.

RustBucket

iTrader: (1)

Do the timing chain job (get a set with steel guides) and see if it fixes the problem. But before you do anything, take off the valve cover and take a look down the timing cover to see if the slack chain has eaten into the water jacket on the right of the timing cover.

If the timing cover is okay, do the timing chain and see if it runs well. If it's not, then you wasted a little effort, but you'll only need to get new gaskets for your WP and TC, you can leave the chain and tensioner in there.

The overhaul is a significantly larger job.

yotagoat

Yeah, there's something to be said for just going ahead and doing the overhaul. In which event, regrooving the cylinder walls would be a definite, I'm thinking, since I've already taken it this far? And of course milling the head and top of block?

yotagoat

So if the slack chain has dug into the water jacket, it will be easy to tell?
Thanks to all for your input.

Swansen

actually, i was just thinking about this, i saw some groves and they aren't to deep, so i wasn't really in dander of them eating through to the wall, but i didn't think about a passage for coolant. Well the chain didn't eat through to anything from what i can tell, but i have no idea how thick the metal is now between the grooves and the water passage.

GMJK86SR5

I did my tc and ordered the parts from EB.
Ted was great with advice, and the job was realitively easy. Went I got the tc cover off, I had a grove also. But for 50 or 60 dollars, you can get a new one. EB said that the grove is a place for cracks to occure.

Once you get the chain on, I think you can check the compression before you button it all back up. This would let you know if you have a value issue. If you do then it would be easy to pull the head and do a value job. Just a thought.

Mike

Bill

If you're uncertain at all, it wouldn't hurt to pull the head.

Because the R series motors are an interference engine, if you're timing was off "too" much you could have bent valves. Do a compression test before you tear it apart that would give you some indication. However when in doubt, pull the head and take it to a machine shop.

I busted a timing chain a while ago...it wasn't fun to clean up that mess.