Helps having cylinder 1 cams facing each other at 45 degrees and as you say all the engraving facing up but it still scared me the first few times. The bank 1 inlet cam shaft likes to snap about a bit as well when you take the locking blocks off
 
I am pleased to report this is now fixed and runs sweet as a nut from the planet nutty. Its been a big job and the credit goes to my mechanic mate john. Last bit of the puzzle was cleaning the electrostatic vanos valve to cure a vanos noise on the rh bank, iv got to refit the LPG system and fix the pixel fault on the dash and it should be good togo.

A big thanks to Ant/saint v8 who kindly lent us his cam locking tool which we could not hav completed the repair without.
I will be doing a full write up with photos for those on here to use as a helpful guide.
 
Well done lads, a tremendous effort....

No probs with the loan of the tools - glad they helped.

Let us know when you are ready and we can arrange to collect. Looking forward to the write up.
 
Iv got to reinstall the lpg so not to worried. Its gonna be run in on petrol as its had a full rebuild then lpg set to auto so cheap motoring
 
Apart from dropping the sump and stripping and cleaning the oil pump nothing to the block, an inspection of all cylinders showed them to be all good. Its been a massive job but worth it I hope I must state that my mate John did pretty much all the work rebuilding this engine, fault finding before and after and getting it to where we are now even sorting out the vanos rattle on bank 2 which must have been their prior to repair.
 
Good job, mates like John are very handy !
I'm still thinking of a building a new engine, it keeps coming back to the best option regarding the block is to find a good used one.
i have a rattle / tapping that I cannot trace and have tried many things including new vanos solenoids and rebuilding the vanos units.
It is an odd one. The last step is to try swapping out the vanos unit for a another one in case the unit I rebuilt has failed again, failing that it is deeper in the engine i think.
 
Try replaceing the vanos electrostatic valves there cheap and if not 100% will throw the vanos out and cause a rattle one of ours had a rattle cleaned it out with brake cleaner several times filled it with clean engine oil refitted no more rattle
 
Yeah that's them, I would be tempted to clean the original ones with brake cleaner proper fill them up and leave to soak, do it a few times then fill with engine oil and give them ago
 
I think mine are ok, i cleaned them and tested them off the car as well, my compression is down on all cylinders on bank 2, bank 1 all cylinders are bang on 200 PSI, bank 2 is 190, 165, 180 , 195 which makes me think either a blocked cat has damaged them or somehow the timing is causing a valve to leak slightly in all cylinder. I pretty sure i timed it ok as I have done it about 4 or 5 times now. i turned the engine over by hand and rechecked the timing and that the vanos units all tested ok with the continuity test after turning over by hand.
The only thing that has played on my mind a bit is the manual says to set bank 2 first then bank 1 and i can'r remember if i did that but turning the engine over by hand and checking more than once, I can;t see that being a problem.
 
Bank 2 is timed first as the chain tension is taken up on Bank 1 and is on the slack side of the chain when driven and could knock the timing out when chain is tensioned again.
 
I have read that, but the cams can only be in one place as can the trigger wheel and crank and the vanos units are set to the stop using the multimeter and i think i took the slack up anyway when fitting the chain and tensioner tool. i'm not saying i didn't do it that way but i don't remember if i did..
I also turned the engine over twice by hand and then re timed everything so i'm thinking that should have accounted for any slack or do you think I am missing something?
When we did the compression test and added a squirt of oil the compression shot up to 250 on our tester which says bores to me.
 

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