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I'm helping my buddy do his 3.0 head gasket replacement. I got a head for the right side, passenger side. Looking at them they look almost identical so I started putting it together. As I went to put the tensioner for the timing belt on I could not figure out for the life of me how to mount the timing tension on. So I grabbed the old head after shelf and looked at it and noticed there is no bolt hole on it. I really don't want to tear it back apart and look for another head is there any body who has another option or knows how to fix this. Maybe the head I got from someone is off of a different 3.0 or an older model. Any information will help.
I believe the head casting is the same for both sides, they just swapped the cams around. The bolt hole for it is very close to where the head meets the block. I do not know if both heads are drilled and tapped for the bolt. Worst case you have to drill and tap it.
The castings for left and right are similar, but still quite different. The left head has the mounting for the distributor.
I don't recall that the tensioner bolts to the head, but my recollection is imperfect, and the manual doesn't address that issue. http://web.archive.org/web/201204051...67timingbe.pdf Perhaps some photos of what you're looking at?
I went out to the carport, and saw that the belt tensioner does mount to the passenger side cylinder head.
The distributor mounting is actually the cap for the first cam journal on the driver side.
As Scope said " The heads are similar" therein lies the rub.
You probably could put a pass. side head on the driver side, and the #1 cam cap would take care of mounting the dist. for you.
But putting a driver side head on the pass side wouldn't work because the factory probably didn't drill and tap the tensioner mounting holes.
I can't be 100% sure of that statement, because my donor engine is still not completely disassembled, and I can't see the rear of the driver side head.
I'll bet that when the OP sourced the head he used, it didn't have a cam, or caps on it, so it was easy to overlook the tensioner mount hole requirement.
In any case, I think it is head removal time.
Good luck to the OP
11-18-2019, 09:46 PM
