v8 4.4 vanos

Hi guys, does anyone know how much you can buy the vanos units for my 02 4.4 v8. I have been told to go to bmw as they are alot cheaper than the main stealers but they are not very helpful when you say its a range rover. any advise would be most appreciated,thank you

The vanos units are complete sprocket assemblies on the V8. They are a fortune, trouble is of they are worn and rattling, the "u" guid is normally worn so it's a full timing rebuild which is more than a secondhand engine. You will also find you cannot change them without a pile ofspecial tools mainly relating to repositioning the cam sensor timing discs which have to be absolutely accurate otherwise you get anything from a permanent check engine light and rough running to non starting.
Why do you want to change them?

Part numbers are are here and you will need pretty much everything on the diagram, plus gaskets. The vanos units are around 500 quid a piece in this country plus vat.

To get the BMW part nos go to realoem. Look at the e53 x5 upto 2003. My understanding is its the seals that fail rather than the units themselves.

It's the replaceable seals that fail on the straight 6 BMW motors. The V8 wears the spiral within the sprocket and starts rattling like an old diesel. It depends why they need replacing. If it's rattling then it needs a pair of sprockets, plus chains and guides. If you reuse the old chain on the new sprockets it kills them very quickly. If it only rattle briefly on start up, odds are it's the chain tensioner getting close to the limits of it's travel. New ones have a stronger spring to alleviate this and it's a simple job to change, but the root cause is normally the U shaped guide wearing, which also throws up cam sensor fault codes when it gets to an advanced state. The seals are not replaceable in the sprockets. Mr Vanos claims to be able to repair them but more often than not they are still noisy.

Thanks for that info, both vanos units had play in them when i did all the chain guides and tensioner, thought i could live with the noise but that ain"t gonna happen, looks like another partial strip down. As far as i know there is no separate parts on range rover vanos as they are totally differant to the loose bolts and seal problems on bmw`s