Unlucky Me, Stripped Teeth On Cambelt

[jayblack-gti 0]

My poor cars off the road for a bit, bloody nightmare , came back from santa pod on sun, happily motoring along the A5 at 85 or so when engine just cut out, so i knocked gears into neutral and rolled to a layby, engine turning over really quickly so thought snapped cambelt, looked at it today and half the teeth have been stripped off the belt. Suppose the chances of bent valves are high considering the speed i was going when the belt failed. As its likely that ill have to remove the head, how big a job will this be and i suppose its worthwhile doing the valve stem steals at the same time. Just cant believe the amount of teeth missing on the belt, last cambelt change was at 70k and she's now done 118k so should the belt have failed this soon?

 

cheers jay

[M@tt 77]

by the sounds of it your defiantely going to have mashed valves

 

50k mileage doesn't sound too bad in terms of failure but i suppose it depends on how hard it has been driven i would imagine.

 

yep its definitely gonna be head off and a load of new valves, you can proabably pic up an entire engine for £40 and pull the bits off it you need and yeah if you've got the head off i'd do the seals as well.

 

Not a massive job but will probably take most of a weekend i would have thought (depending if you've done it before) and if you gonna do seals you'll need spring compressors etc

[Guest BrainFluid]

You never know untill you have a peep in there!

[Pugnut 9 1 Cars]

its usually a good idea to just chuck a new belt on to see what happens etc . do a compression test . you'de be surprised how many people also get away with it . The fact that there are many stripped teeth is not a good sign though

 

50k is a long time to keep a belt on . 30k or so imo is about right.

[jackherer 543]

mileage aside they need to be changed after a certain length of time too. I swap them every 36k or 3 years, whichever comes sooner.

[neilshouse 0]

For the teeth to have been stripped from the belt I would imagine that the camshaft or waterpump has seized, I would check this out before dismantling anything.

[jayblack-gti 0]

water pumps fine, just tried a new cambelt, timed engine all up and done a compression test, no compression on any of the cylinders so presume all the valves are bent, just in middle of taking head off now

 

lovely job

 

jay