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Timing chain question

39K views 16 replies 12 participants last post by  BillGrissom 
#1 ·
What is the replacement interval for the timing chain on the 3.8? I don't even know if there is a recommended interval, I couldn't find anything in the manual.

Anybody with the answer?
 
#3 ·
The 3.8 and 3.3 liter engines in the Caravans and Town and Countries are push rod and don't have an overhead cam and therefore don't have a timing chain. Or are we talking about something else?
 
#4 ·
chain

dm3 said:
The 3.8 and 3.3 liter engines in the Caravans and Town and Countries are push rod and don't have an overhead cam and therefore don't have a timing chain. Or are we talking about something else?
HUh ???? Of course it has a timing chain . :ask_wsign
 
#7 ·
st1100pilot said:
I just purchased an Accord, and I know they need one at 100k.
That's cuz it's a belt.
 
#9 ·
<<I always thought pushrod engines used gears or something to turn the cam, but if it has one, I guess it has one.>>


There are some more exotic racing engines that use gears instead of chains but almost all 'production' pushrod engines use a timing chain. Yes, the 3.3/3.8 has a timing chain. There are no maintenance intervals to follow on chains.
 
#10 ·
Yeah, there's only been one production engine that I know of that uses a gear drive and that's the Ford 300 straight six. At Advance, we sold one or two replacement sets each month for the older ones. Apparently, Ford used steel for the crankshaft gear, but nylon or some other composite for the camshaft gear, and the nylon would wear down after 100k or more miles.

Of course, you can get aftermarket gear drives for a lot of V8 engines for that nice supercharger-like whine, but I don't know if they're casting them yet for our V6 engines. ;)
 
#15 ·
A year and a half ago I replaced the timing cover gasket and oring on my 97 town and country. The chain was very loose. The van had about 175k miles. I replaced the timing chain with a Cloyes brand. The new chain was nice an tigh with minimal slack. The timing chain fixed a clanking sound the van always made since I bought the van many years ago. I noticed many other caravans and town and country vans making the noise and it did not get worse so I never bothered to fix it. I thought it was normal.
 
#16 ·
Yup, timing chain slap is normal; all four of our vans had the slap starting in the 70,000-80,000 mile range, and it never got worse even though all four vans went over 200,000 miles.
 
#17 ·
One slight data point. I removed the timing cover in our 2002 T&C 3.8L a year ago at ~260k miles, mainly because a slight leak from the O-ring in the oil passage, plus figured the timing chain would be worn by then. It did have a little slack, so I changed the timing set, but not enough to slap the cover, so could have gone another 200k miles. I don't recall it having a tensioner. Only complication was that some gomer had snapped off the crankshaft bolt and left like that, so I had to drill it out to remove.
 
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