Discovery 1 V8 Timing Cover & Fittings
Timing Covers
There are two types of timing cover fitted to the V8 Discovery (see also Technical Note on Oil Pumps, on previous pages).
The first type, fitted to carb & efi vehicles up to VIN LA (1994), incorporates a housing for the camshaft-driven oil pump gears on the lower right hand side of the cover. These gears are actually driven off the end of the distributor which is, itself, driven by a skew gear on the camshaft.
The later type - fitted from VIN MA (April 1994) - features a crank-driven oil pump. Known also as the 'intermediate' timing cover, it differs from the Series 2 Range Rover (Pegasus) type in that it has a provision for a distributor - driven, as before, by a camshaft gear.
Although the oil pump design of the later covers is a big improvement over the earlier ones, they cannot easily be retro-fitted to earlier vehicles, as the crank-driven oil pump requires a long-nose crankshaft, not fitted to earlier engines.