The day after I bought my VE Series II 3.0 SIDI I read one of these posts and vowed the od everything I could to avoid a timing chain issue. That was 5 years and 150,000km, and despite 7500km servicing, a whole lot of liquid molly and more than a few prayers I'm now up for the rebuild
following what I suspect was an oil flush that left a bit of residue that blocked the sump pickup starving oil.
My (limited mechanical) understanding is that the engine is that the oil pickup plays a big part in these problems. Has anyone found a racing style high volume pickup that can be fitted to the VEs that offers a much larger filter surface area?
If I have to do the timing chain, I figure may as well take any preventative actions possible to avoid it happening again.