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  #1  
Old 01-13-2011, 02:50 PM
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Default FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair

This is for all of your DIY's: Don't be afraid of this. I just replaced the timing chains and tensioners on my 05 CC 4x4 that currently has 115k miles. I have had the whine from about the 35k mark and finally decided to fix it since I do long hauls and was afraid of breaking down in the middle of nowhere. I am not a mechanic or auto technician but I was able to do all of the work myself . The project took a total of 12 working hours spread out over 3 days. I took my time, took lots of photos, and fixed a few other things while I had it apart. Although it was time consuming, the replacement was straight forward. This is basically how I did it:

1. I have the CD shop manual and printed all off the necessary pages for reference. (timing chain cover and chain removal/install)
2. Copy of the NTB 09-128 bulletin
3. I purchased the 2 Kent Moore service tools needed, and you do need them!!! (Flywheel lock and tensioner clamp). I will be listing these 2 once used items on EBay at a later date.
4. Pre-ordered the parts listed on the NTB
5. Purchased additional parts including the primary timing chain, tensioner arm, water pump (just in case), and valve cover gaskets.
6. Pressure washed the engine to get as much of the grime and oil off.
7. Followed the disassembly procedure in the manual.
8. Once the timing cover was off, I manually rotated the engine until the index marks on the old timing chain lined up with the marks on the gears. ( I had to rotate it counter clockwise about 3 times for it to line up)
9. I locked the engine in place from rotating, compressed and locked the primary tensioner (the overtravel clip has to be moved while compressing)
removed the tensioner arm and chain.
10. Important!! Use a cresent wrench on the camshafts for support and a long handled ratchet/breaker bar to loosen the cam gear bolts. Do not use an Impact gun.
11. I used a grease pencil to premark the old chains and gears just in case something slipped. The new chains have blue, copper and gold colored links for indexing. Remove and replace one secondary chain at a time.
12. Compress the secondary tensioner shoes using the special tool and replace with the new shoes.
13. Follow the cover reassembly procedures.

Things to look out for:
1. Make sure that you have a proper tool set. Especially 10, 12, and 14mm universals. Metric allen drives (not wrenches) 24" or longer extensions for the power steering/alternator bracket.
2. Remove the right front fender protector and skid plate. makes the work a lot easier. You do not have to remove the radiator. Just drain the coolant.
3. To remove the water pipe that goes through the timing cover, use a long-long nose plier to remove the spring clamp towards the pipe, use a long dull, thin flat screw driver to gently break the seal to seperate pipe from the hose, try not to twist it too much.
4. Do not remove the crankshaft pulley bolt until the pulley is ready to come off. The pulley can fall off on its own and it will hurt in the pocket if it hits the cement.
5. I spent 3 hours carefully cleaning off all of the silicone sealer from all of the surfaces. I place rags/towels over the valve train, spark plug tubes, intake ports, and inside the oil pan where it was open from the cover. I counted the number of rags/towels that I used to make sure that I did not leave anything in the engine.
6. The long bolt on the oil pan cannot be removed because of the rack and pinion. Don't worry about it. Just make sure that it is clean.
6. Tap the dowel pins into the cover per the manual.
7. I prefitted the cleaned cover with no seals/sealer on to the engine and laid out the bolts. Remember, once the silicone sealer is applied, you have X amount of time before it sets up. I used permatex Hi-Temp RTV Black.
8. You have to reset (tap) the power steering bracket spacer and alternator bushing otherwise it will not fit.
9. I repaired my leaking windshield washer resiviour and cleaned the MAF and flow meter while they were out. Because I was careful, had a clean work area (outside), wore disposable nitrile gloves, and made sure that gasket material did not fall into the engine, I did not change the oil. I will change it in 1k miles.

Engine started and ran great on the first crank. No leaks and the engine is now very quiet.

Good luck. It was for me.

Check out the photos
Attached Thumbnails
FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0545_2_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0547_4_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0548_5_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0551_7_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0552_8_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0553_9_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0556_1_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0557_13_1-jpg  

FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0559_15_1-jpg   FYI/DIY: Timing Chain Tensioner Whine VQ40 repair-img_0560_2_1-jpg  
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  #2  
Old 01-14-2011, 06:59 AM
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This was great and thanks for taking the time and effort to do such a outstanding post. I can see from the photos that a great amount of time was spent doing the job right. I will print out this and put in my file as i know at some point i will ending up having to do my 05.Thanks again. PS let me know what you want for the two kent moore tools as i can find only one on the net.

Last edited by tech22; 01-14-2011 at 07:19 AM.
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Old 01-25-2011, 12:04 PM
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Tech 22

thanks for the 5 star rating. If anyone who has read this post and has questions, please feel free to post questions. I will let you know when I will be posting the tools for sale
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Old 01-25-2011, 01:07 PM
07Nissan 07Nissan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rkmengineering View Post
Tech 22

thanks for the 5 star rating. If anyone who has read this post and has questions, please feel free to post questions. I will let you know when I will be posting the tools for sale
Outstanding post! Do you have the part numbers for the Kent Moore tensioner clamp & flywheel lock you mentioned? Approx. price for each new? I tried looking these tools up online, but didn't have any luck. Thanks!
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Old 01-25-2011, 03:47 PM
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Default 07 nissan and tech 22 tensioner whine additional information

the 2 kent moore tools are J-38761 flywheel lock and J-50246 tensioner clamp with the 3 tensioner wire locks (note: the third lock did not fit into the primary tensioner. Too big, could have been specific to my engine.)

they are available through Hands on Tools but one of the items that I purchased was the last one available and they told me there would be no more until April?)
Also, they were expensive. I will list mine at a reduced rate.

The tensioner shoes and Tiimng chains are Nissan campain parts and have special numbers. 13028ZK01C chain and 13097ZK01C for the shoes. Download the ntb from this site. for all of the parts needed.

There were a few other "tricks" that I did on my project to help me out, but I did not list them on my post. If you plan to do this, let me know and tell you what else I did. (it would have made the post way too long)

good luck and thanks again for the positive responses

rkmengineering
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Old 01-25-2011, 04:01 PM
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Default 07 Nissan and Tech 22

please see the previous post
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Old 01-25-2011, 05:32 PM
07Nissan 07Nissan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rkmengineering View Post
the 2 kent moore tools are J-38761 flywheel lock and J-50246 tensioner clamp with the 3 tensioner wire locks (note: the third lock did not fit into the primary tensioner. Too big, could have been specific to my engine.)

they are available through Hands on Tools but one of the items that I purchased was the last one available and they told me there would be no more until April?)
Also, they were expensive. I will list mine at a reduced rate.

The tensioner shoes and Tiimng chains are Nissan campain parts and have special numbers. 13028ZK01C chain and 13097ZK01C for the shoes. Download the ntb from this site. for all of the parts needed.

There were a few other "tricks" that I did on my project to help me out, but I did not list them on my post. If you plan to do this, let me know and tell you what else I did. (it would have made the post way too long)

good luck and thanks again for the positive responses

rkmengineering
Thanks again! Ref the special tools, I believe the general consensus is the J-50246 Tensioner Shoe Installer (~$35-$55) works fine on both the FWD/RWD 3.5 & 4.0 litre engines. However, the flywheel ring gear stopper J-48761 listed as "essential" in NTB09-128 is almost $100! I've had a couple folks tell me J-50288 (~$35-$50) may also work. It's possible the J-50288 flywheel ring gear stopper could be specific for the FWD Nissan 3.5 litre flywheels and the J-48761 specific to the RWD 4.0 litre Frontier, xTerra, Pathfinder, etc.--I don't know. Anybody out there familiar with these tools that can shed some light?
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Old 01-25-2011, 05:52 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rkmengineering View Post
the 2 kent moore tools are J-38761 flywheel lock and J-50246 tensioner clamp with the 3 tensioner wire locks (note: the third lock did not fit into the primary tensioner. Too big, could have been specific to my engine.)

they are available through Hands on Tools but one of the items that I purchased was the last one available and they told me there would be no more until April?)
Also, they were expensive. I will list mine at a reduced rate.

The tensioner shoes and Tiimng chains are Nissan campain parts and have special numbers. 13028ZK01C chain and 13097ZK01C for the shoes. Download the ntb from this site. for all of the parts needed.

There were a few other "tricks" that I did on my project to help me out, but I did not list them on my post. If you plan to do this, let me know and tell you what else I did. (it would have made the post way too long)

good luck and thanks again for the positive responses

rkmengineering
J-50246 tensioner shoe installer $37.31
J-48761 ring gear stopper $98.38
Nissan TechMate - Detail: J-48761 - STOPPER, RING GEAR
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Old 01-25-2011, 06:11 PM
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Default j-50288

the j38761 is a huge machined block that fits into the cut out of the bell housing and will not move/shift/rotate and will prevent the flywheel from turning once installed. the j-50288 appears to be considerably smaller for a smaller cut out.

The original purpose was to lock the flywheel so that you could use the engine as the stop when manually unbolting the bolts from the harmonic balancer and camshaft bolts. ( the timing chains would be left installed and would take the torque, including the tensioner guides) per ntb09-128. This was obviously done to facilitate a faster repair time. I would not load up my new chains with this kind of load. I pulled the valve covers and used a cresent wrench. I used the lock to keep the engine from turning if something moved.

One very important note: I used a mirror to check the aligment of the chain around the crank. (I also used the mirror to make sure that i did not miss removing any bolts on the cover)

On the initial install of the primary chain, the crank to chain index mark looked right. with the mirror, I was off a tooth!!!!!. the acute angle looking down made it appear that I was on the mark.

this was one of the things to look out for that I did not mention previously.

In short, my advice: If you are going to do it, don't Mickey Mouse it! $150 will seem small if you are broken down on the side of the road.

FYI: After I made the original post, I had approx 50 miles on the engine to make sure everything was OK, Then I went on a 800 mile road trip with travel trailer, went from sea level to 7000 ft. (no trailer at 7000) and back with no problems.
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Old 01-25-2011, 06:21 PM
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J-38761 is not a good #. The number provided in the TSB is J-48761
J-50288 is for the 3.5L engine. It will not work on the 4.0L
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Old 01-25-2011, 06:34 PM
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thanks for catchoing the typo

J48761 is correct
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Old 01-26-2011, 08:15 AM
Trilobe Trilobe is offline
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The cleanliness of the engine is impressive. What grade of oil have you used and how often do you cahange it out?
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Old 01-26-2011, 09:51 AM
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hi there

I change the oil and filter every 3000 miles using castrol gtx 10w40 from walmart and oem filters.
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Old 01-28-2011, 06:05 PM
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My apologies to everyone for posting this in the public forum, but . . . rkmengineering, I sent you two replies via private message earlier today. If you didn't receive them please let me know, thanks! 07Nissan
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Old 01-28-2011, 06:50 PM
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Thanks to Nissan 07 and others:

I have received several private questions since I posted the orginial thread.
Hopefully, this may help answer some of your questions. If any Niissan techs or anyone else would like to add, agree, or say that I was way off base, please feel free to do so.

Addendum:

I have learned a lot since I did this project. Let me explain what I found out and it may help in your decision before attempting this. I drove for approx 80k miles with the whine. My photos that I submitted showed the tensioner shoes worn all the way down to where the chains were riding on the hardened steel tensioners pistons ( no noticable damage to the piston tops: see photo). Close examination of the chains showed that the center links were visibly worn down. Since I did not know what was actually going on in the engine, I was concerned. The Dealer wanted $1800 for the job. From what I have heard, the reason that it is an NTB and not a recall is because it is primarily a noise issue. For 80k I was having fun telling everyone that asked, that the noise was from my aftermarket gear driven supercharger. Depending on your driving conditions, if you have been changing your oil regularly, and don't mind the noise, I would not worry about it. Change it out at your convienence. I did it because at the time, I could not find any forum where someone took the time to walk me through the process as to what was going on. In retrospect, what I did gave me peace of mind but really had no bearing on the engine reliability.
hope this helps
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