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CAM belt nightmare!?

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

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    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...

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

     

    Andy

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

     

    cheers Eddie

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    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

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