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Just spent the afternoon pulling the top end off of a 1986 Range Rover V8 3.5efi that belong to my father in law.
Motor had stripped the plastic teeth of the cam gear and that had been replaced by the mechanic, motor was a little tappety, so some lifter lube was poured in.
He drove it about 200km and it was sounding really bad like a collapsed lifter and dropping a cylinder or two.
After pulling a few bits off came across spacers between the efi intake and the manifold and 2 sets of valley pans, and a number of other agricultural looking mods.
Also didn't have the same shaft mount rocker gear that was in all the images on the net. After a bit more research, it appears to be 4.4 P76 with a 3.5efi system sitting on top. He always said it had a lot more go than his old 3.5 and that he didn't think efi and extractors would make that much difference.
Will confirm tomorrow when I go look for the engine number.

After getting all the intake system and valley pans off, looked in the valley to see about a dozen banana shaped pushrods, don't know how this was even running.
Most of the lifters were also very concave on the base and the the cam was severely bruised and very worn.

Biggest thing now is do we just throw another cam, lifters and pushrods in, or pull of the heads and see what damage to the valves and pistons?
May pull out the plugs and use compressed air to see if the valves are still sealing and decide from there what to do next.

If I can get it running would love to delco it, as it currently only uses the computer for fuel using a MAF. It has a nice reluctor type distributor with weights and vacuum advance, at least easy to convert with a camira module.
Will try and get some pics to post up for a laugh.

yoda69

if your lucky it might just be bottoming out the valve springs and no issues in the cylinders .... i would be doing a compression test if it looks ok might be just as easy to do the cam and assocated bits ... BUT if your getting a VRS gasket set that should come with head gaskets ? if so may aswell pull the heads so you can see what shes like, also if nothing else you'll know its got good fresh head gaskets and can measure the head flatness while your at it!!

if it makes you feel any better i stripped a set of ecotec heads today and they are both cracked between the valves!

Thanks for that Holden 202.
WIth everything apart a little hard to do a compression test with no cam or lifteres installed, can do a basic leakdown test with compressed air, if it's coming back out the intake ports I know I have a problem.
Anyway here's a few photos for peoples amusement.

FFAARRRRKKKK!!!

someones obviously done a dodgy job of setting that motor up

i just had another thought, might be an issue of the rocker geometry being off and the rocker pivot running out of travel .....

Now thats a job well done!

I think it's due to the timing gear shearing originally.
Before this the motor had many happy miles without a problem.
The amazing thing is, that even in a Range Rover Auto running like this had no problems doing 100kph on the freeway, just a touch noisy.
I thing when the mechanic found the timing gear he didn't look any further for other damage.
Now just ordering cam, lifters, pushrods and gaskets.

yoda69

are these heads supposed to hit if they break the timing ? i know some motors do and some don't

Haven't been able to get a definitive answer on that, but the valves only lift less than 0.400" stock so I'm hoping may have got lucky.
Guess will now in the next week or two once it's all back together.

yoda69

Didn't they make a bent pushrod for them crappers lol lovely job i remember one in a datsun 1600 and a guy had one heanging off the back of a meyers manx type vw beach buggy he had trouble keeping the front wheels on the road.