I just put a newer 2.4 diesel in my Land Rover after the old one started making noise and was beginning to get VERY hard to start especially in the cold. I decided to pull the old one apart and see if I could find what was wrong. I don’t have the head off yet and I expect to find a bad head gasket as this engine got pretty hot a few years ago, but I did see that the timing chain was loose enough to wear a hole through the bottom of the upper oil pan! The chain was replaced about 30k ago so I wasn’t expecting this. Could the chain tensioner have gone bad?

I didn’t realize how bad this was running until I heard the new one. Even with the noise and the hard starting, it still had almost as much power as this newer one does!

How often do you guys change these chains? The new engine has 67k on it now and I’m assuming it’s never been changed.

Thanks for any input.

Jim