Timing chain guides are not lining up after pi head swap please help

YouTube - In car service of Timing Chain on the Ford 4.6L Modular V8 - Part 1 of 2, Its pretty informative hope this helps!

I watched the video to see if I could catch anything obvious and I couldn't.

Installation of the guides should be pretty straight forward. I've never heard of guides being required either so go back over everything and look for anything obvious. It's really hard to say without looking at it in person. No chance they are installed on the wrong side or anything? I've only had 1 modular apart when I got my 5.4 and I just took it apart to bare block without paying that kind of attention. Plus it was almost a year ago.

On a side note, if it were me I'd be throwing new guides and possibly tensioners in there anyway while its all apart.

jg42122 said:

I just put on my new heads last night, and I am trying to get my 96 gt timed, but the timing chain guides are not lining up since the swap I have not read in any of the write ups that the Timing chain guides would need to be replaced, is their something I am doing wrong?

Click to expand...

It's funny...it's almost as if you would have everything lined up if you were to remove the spacer behind the cam sprocket. I'm not necessarily recommending that but it's interesting that the offset appears to be about the width of that spacer...

Okay, I just looked at my cams (I have the OE PI cams and sprockets on the bench now that I've got the Comp 272AHs in). Make sure you've got the left and rights set up properly. I presume the cams and sprockets are as they were removed from the car. You'll have to double check as needed.

Right side:


Left side:


Note that the sprockets are different between left and right. One is "solid" (left) while the other has holes in it (right.) As well, the left sprocket has the little egg-tooth for triggering the cam position sensor. Notably in these pics is the shoulder on the back of the left sprocket that's much larger than that on the right sprocket.

Make sure you've got the correct sprocket on the correct side. Don't just remove the spacers. They're supposed to be there on both sides.