Hi,

 

I need to thoughts on a potentially disasterous engine problem.

 

I was doing about 80 at the weekend when I heard a bit a a bang and the car ground to a halt. On inspection the cambelt (which was replaced around a year ago) had crack through the timing casing.

 

I feared the worse and started getting quotes on engine prices (arounf £2k fitted seemed to be the most common, does that sound right?).

 

I them got a bloke who has done some work on the car to take a look and he said he thinks a tensioner has gone and so the belt has jumped off, rather than snapping. He also said that becuase the car still turns over ok, there is a good chance that I can get away with a new belt and tensioner (but he did mumble something about invisible hairline cracks). As this is pretty different from other comments I have heard about valve/piston damage, does what he is saying sound like it could be true!?

 

In an ideal world it would be and I would just have the expense of him doing the belt and tensioner, but I dont want to recover it to him just to strip down and say is knackered and I need to get an engine anyway.

 

Any thoughts very appreciated!

 

Cheers,

 

Andy

I had an upper idler pulley bolt shear on me. At the time I was doing about 50mph ish but got the clutch in asap. The belt jumped a hell of a lot of teeth on the nearside exhaust cam, but the engine was fine. As a check, he can simply put an old belt on (or reuse your old one if its not damaged) and do a compression test. Despite all the horror stories I've only ever heard of 2 cases of engine damage from cambelt snaps...

Andy, thanks for the advice, which I will pass on to him, sounds pretty promising!

 

Andy

Do the idler pulleys fail alot on the zed as i have had just the timing belt changed but not the pulleys

 

cheers Eddie

It wasn't my pulley that went, it was the bolt it was attached with. The lower intake had been in the garage when I rebuilt the engine and I think it must have got stood on and bent the stud :( Fine now though - 12k miles and counting :D