Aftermarket cam tensioners

[MikkiJayne]

Yeah they're barely worn at all. The other one is exactly the same - 110k on this one too. Are they less worn than yours?

I'm pretty sure they are original - proper markings etc, and externally they look the same age as the engine. Its my phone camera that makes the shoes look a different colour I think. They are a brown colour like builder's tea, rather than the greyish they appear in the pic.

I just popped the cam covers off a 30V V6 I have in the workshop to compare, and that exhibits exactly the same behaviour as bank 1 - the tensioners jump up and down when rotated by hand. That engine definitely has no oil pressure as it's been sitting for a few years.

So, the plot thickens... maybe the tensioner is a red herring and in fact it is an oil pressure thing? I'm very curious about why the two sides appear to have been behaving differently. I'm doubting myself now, wondering if I've suffered from 'direction of fit error', looking for a problem on bank 1 and not noticing that 2 was behaving the same.

I had a look in the cylinders with my camera - it'll resolve the carbon on the top of the piston, but only when the piston is at the bottom of the bore. I can't do that with the cams out and belt off so I'll have to put it back together and time it up again and have a look at each pot one at a time. I think thats now going to be what determines whether the heads come off since the compression test appears to be somewhat misleading...

I'll have a look for that SSP too