Wifes cambelt snapped on Zafira

Just had a phone call from the wife. RAC are towing her home, she thinks
cambelt on her zaf 1.8 ECO has gone. she says she didnt hear a bang, it just
lost power.
Its got 70k on it and I had recently noticed a buzzy, vibrating sound that I
jad put down to something resonating. wonder if its terminal.

opinions anyone?

watch this space.

Mike

 

had it been changed at 40k?
if not, should it have been?


mike

 

dont think so. we've had it for 8k and it came with a fleet history. The
cars back now-very prompt service by the RAC, and its definately the
cambelt.
I'm too pissed off at the moment to go looking for the service history. Just
wondering what size bill I'm looking at, and whether or not an exchange
engine might be better alternative. but not one from a scrappers.

Mike

(wound up at the moment)

 

I just had my timing belt changed when I had my water pump replaced at 71000
miles. The woman in front of me was just paying the bill for her timing
belt going on her tigra. It bent (4 or 8 - can't remember) valves, and cost
£600.

Bob

 

The timing belt went on my wifes astra only 8k miles over the life of it,
anyway it was £850,

thats a lot of beer, which i needed afterwards, sorry

 

"thought I would post some quick notes to let the group know more on this.

set to this morn after I got home from work (working nights). I neede those
funny star type sockets. no problem, as I had a small set from a few monthe
back when I did the thermostat.(another of the wifes grumbles-fixing the
heater at the start of summer. wait til november. thats when the aircon gets
sorted<g>).
took the top part of the belt cover off, and as expected, theres a slack
belt. couldnt pull it out though, which got me wondering if the water pump
or a plastic idler had collapsed. After consulting mr haynes book of
practical jokes ("...simply remove...")I discovered the bottom pulley had to
come off before I could remove the lower cambelt cover. problem. need a
bigger socket than the one i have. 6 mile trip to toolshop fot a bigger set.
get home-more probs. they are all 1/2 in drive and all my stuff is 3/8.
bummocks. back to shop. no sets, so can i have a ratchet and some
extensions. longest ones they have in stock are 5 inch. need plenty as has
to reach out from bottom pulley through wheel area to give me enough room to
swing ratchet. brainwave . get some 3/8-1/2 adaptors instead. brilliant.
back home, which way does the bolt turn? lets see, viewed end on, the crank
turns anti clock, so it should be a left hand thread to prevent loosening.
tried levering, cursing, banging, cursing, impact driver and cursing.
nothing. on an impulse, gave it one whack anti clock and away in went. got
everything off and sure enough the bugger had snapped.

later, went to a motor factors and bought a cheap £15 belt. if weather holds
tomorrow am going to throw it on and see what happens. the idlers and pump
seem ok, but if the engine is stuffed then right now I dont want to throw a
genuine vauxhall kit at it.

watch this space

Mike

 

Hi Mike, hope you got away with the belt change and everything went
smoothly. Can you update us on the outcome ?

Gio

 

Ok, car is now up and running again.

As i said, I threw a cheap belt on and all it did was cough, burp and fart
at me. No choice then but to pull the head. Did this on the 17th.

This took me about 4-5hours, including tea breaks. large amounts of time
were spent figuring out how to do some small things.
Examples were unbolting the stabilising bracket at the rear of the engine
that went from the block to the inlet manifold. Some of the electrical
connections were none too easy to undo either. The crankshaft pulley bolt
was difficult because it was counter intuitive. as you look at the pulley
from the drivers side, once the wheel and plastic wheelarch trim were
removed, the pulley rotates clockwise. Logically you would expect the bolt
to be a left hand thread, otherwise the rotation of the crank would tend to
undo it. haynes book simply says to unbolt the pulley. lots of effort later
I tried counter clockwise and off it came! For this I found top gear and
brakes on solid worked fine to lock the crank. I used a bar @ 30 inches long
wedged on the brake pedal and front seat. easier than having someone get in
and out with one wheel off. same story with the cam pulleys, (RH thread) but
to lock the cams there is a hexagon on each shaft to put a large spanner
on-I used an adjustable. Theres also a water pipe at the rear of the head
that you have to unbolt the spigot. this was very fiddley to do.

All in all the removal went pretty smoothly. I removed the inlet manifold
and left it in the car (there was one water pipe I couldnt dislodge) but I
undid the exhaust from the manifold and removed the head/exhaust manifold as
one piece. Tricky spot was when inlet manifold dropped onto the starter
terminals and shorted them out. I hadnt disconnected the battery, as I didnt
want to fanny about with the powered alarm horn. As soon as I looked, I saw
the valves were well and truly bent. slight dents in the piston crowns, but
quite acceptable. they were however, quite manky with carbon and badly
needed cleaning.

Monday did some ringing round some engineers and ended up going to a place @
10 miles away. dropped it off monday afternoon and was ready tuesday dinner,
but I wasnt able to pick it up until wednesday. I'll be detailing costs at
the end of this tale, but needed 14 valves but only 2 guides. when I saw the
valves, those 2 had a nice double bend in them! The stems were a lot thinner
than I expected, but I suppose if they bend easy it saves even more damage
to the pistons.

Set at it on saturday and as soon as I lifted bonnet I saw first problem. I
didnt get all the water out when I lifted the head and as a result one of
the bores was filled with water,that I neglected to get rid of. well over
the week it had drained past the rings into the sump. ah well...
masked off all holes with tape and cleaned the crowns. bores looked fine, no
scoring or stepping at all.
Putting it all back together was relatively straight foreward. timing the
cams was tricky because there is a centre pop mark on each pulley. these
have to be facing each other, level with the top of the head. but theres a
large plastic back plate (for the cam belt cover) in the way of lining it up
by eye. had to do it with a ruler, measuring distance from head to top of
back plate, then back plate to timing marks. I didnt bother with the cheap
belt I got earlier. Fitted a genuine Vx belt kit, complete with 2 new idlers
and an new tensioner. seemed odd to be replacing a metal idler with a
plastic one tho...
PLenty of oil in top end before fitting cover. Did have some head scratching
figuring out where all the electrical plugs went. some WILL fit wrong plugs.
and although vauxhall have colour coded them, I wish they had used more than
black!

Tense moment firing it up, but it caught first turn and after a few seconds
rattling, the hydraulic followers filled with oil and it smoother out. It
made a godawful squealing though, and the engine light was on. the noise was
soon tracked down to the cambelt cover binding on the bottom pulley. its
held in place with clips and I hadnt quite pressed one home. the light was
solved by unplugging the replugging all the connectors. A short test drive
confirmed it seemed ok, then following day took it round to local fast fit
type place where son works. did me an oil/filter change

And now the costs.

From the engineers:

full head job inc comp buckets £107.
head set £38.58
new head bolts:£17.20
6 exhaust valves: £42.67
8 inlet valves:£48.00
2 inlet valve guides£ 16.74

VAT £47.28

TOTAL:£317.47


other parts

Cheap cambelt:£15.,00 (not needed)

Vx cambelt kit £100.00 (should have been @ £117, but they gave me a
discount.)

Oil change£10

Tools I needed to buy

Set of those funny star sockets: £18 (on a strip. some were 3/8 drive, some
1/2, hence the adaptors)

impact driver £15 (not needed)

Pair of socket adaptors (3/8-1/2 & 1/2-3/8) £10

total to date £485. Bear in mind that £30 really didnt need spending, but I
need to get some anti-freeze as theres only water in at the moment.
Job was done outside my house by me alone, so I guess I saved a lump on
garage labour costs. I ran it up on the kerb, then used the vehicles
standard jack, removed the wheel and placed it under the car on the
pavement, then lowered it onto the wheel for support. that and the kerb
hight gave me just enough room to wiggle under to work.

Other tools used were a 3/8 drive socket set, a set of metric combination
spanners, a large adjustable spanner, one of those extending wheelbrace
thingys, a torque wrench (borrowed) and a set of torx screwdriver bits.
useful items were a large hand lamp and a mallet. I was also well equiped
with a wide range of curses and obscenities, along with the skill to use
them in an appropriate manner.


Sorry to bang on so much, but I hope this is of interest to someone. If
anyone has any questions, please ask.

Mike

 

<snipped - with great regret, purely to save bandwidth...>

What an informative and entertainingly written post!!! Fabulous - should be
put somewhere on a permanent Vaux website.

Particularly love the mix of professional engineering jargon and "...those
funny star sockets..." - and the advice on expletives, I must look for some
in Halfords next time....!!

Thanks, Mike

 

That was a bloody good read about a fantastic job, and outside on the road
as well. When I was younger all I ever managed was a decoke. That was on
my own driveway and it took me days. Well done Mike.

Regards and with respect.

Dave.

 

A first class report on what was obviously a very worrying and frustrating
time for you. I hope everything goes well now you have put it back
together. You are sure one brave man and I take my hat off to you for not
only doing the job but completing such a detailed report for the groups
benefit.

Thanks

Gio

 

Hardly an informative piece he never told us how many sugars he had in his
tea!

 

Respect.
That's what that deserves.
Dave