Looks like this is what he said in the post:
"The hole in the chain guide and tensioner bracket that the snout of the oil pump goes through needs to be enlarged as the snout on the s55 oil pump is larger."
So I have a cheap eBay chain guide rail for testing purposes. Gonna either make the hole larger or cut out the cat ears and see. I'll try to upload pics.
I did what you’re suggesting myself when we were experimenting with our HPFP, we also tried using a newer style oil pump with the dog ears, and grinded out the chain bracket with a dremmel to fit the dog ears on the newer oil pumps, and it created a weak section on the bracket. (I traced the dog ears from a newer bracket, and matched them up delicately) This section snapped right at the ear on the right side, but I’m not 100% sure if it was because of the decreased durability in that section, or because of the leaf spring tensioner driving newer HPFP issue, or both. (i.e the tensioner broke, bounced around and broke the weak section)
We then tried welding the leaf spring tensioner to the newer style bracket that already had dog ears. We welded the leaf spring tensioner on, using a rivet in the original location, very small weld, but it seemed fine. This did not work either. We suspect the bracket got hot and the weld popped out. It held for about a week, and was the only fail point on that set up. (Big fail)
What you’re talking about is similar to the first thing we tried with our setup once we found the compatibility issue. We are about 99% convinced that that leaf spring style tensioner chain guide will not be reliable on anything other than the PWG N55, with the flat style oil pump, and N54 style HPFP. Anything else isn’t worth the lack of reliability and risk to us. We got extremely lucky to even save that block, considering we broke 3 brackets, the second time it threw metal shavings everywhere, and the last time it spun the crank hub oil gear.
We ended up getting a whole F Chassis EWG block that came with the hydraulic tensioner mounting holes, and newer bracket with dog ears.
This car has about 5k miles on it as we speak, on full E, FX-180, JB4 with MHD BEF. Our stress was eased, and if we wanted to test a S55 oil pump setup, or another oil pump, we wouldn’t have any concerns on the drive system for it. It is solid.
We still have that PWG E block to experiment on. Unfortunately, we had some things come up, so we haven’t done any testing on the set up that I mentioned in my earlier post. We had the valvetronic worm gear give out, and haven’t recovered quite yet. To clarify on that, we ended up using an N54 HPFP with the E chassis PWG leaf spring bracket and older flat style oil pump without the dog ears. This hasn’t been tested yet, but we’re confident it shouldn’t be an issue, as it’s identical to the OEM PWG E Chassis set up. (Our only concern is the efficiency of the N54 HPFP with the F Chassis DME)
Ultimately to my last point, our last option and one we debated on before doing what we did, was using the EWG, F Chassis Hydrotensioner Bracket, with the F Chassis Oil Pump (ears), and whatever HPFP setup we choose, by welding the hydraulic tensioner to the bracket, instead of mounting it to the block, or creating any weak sections in the aluminum bracket. We were skeptical of this, since our peasized weld before didn’t work for the leaf spring tensioner, however,
The Hydraulic Tensioner fits on a foot, on the F Chassis EWG bracket, and has a significantly larger surface area. We looked at so many options, and planned on welding the hydraulic tensioner, to the bracket on this foot. This was the next, most viable, and probably last option.
I know that you’re on a different adventure. If you’re not changing the HPFP, then I think it’s doable with a quality bracket. Just a thought. Plz share updates, as these things are a huge bottleneck for people doing N55 swaps in different year ranges.
Good Luck!!
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