Renault Clio Cam Belt Broke

i'm afraid you wont get much sympathy from the regulars on here, cam belt replacement is always the first thing to do if there is no history of when it was last done...

It would be cheaper to transplant a complete donor engine ffrom a written off car (hear it running first though) or failing that, the cylinder head off it..

tim.

The message from "chickenleggs" contains these words:

The wife's went a couple of years ago. Renault will try to charge you £300 for a set of valves 'cos they only sell them in sets of four and you're likely to have bent inlet and exhaust. However, of course, you can buy them singly from specialists - about £8 each, IIRC.

Head gasket's about £25-30 and I forget how much the belt was. Allow about five hours swearing at it 'cos it's a very tight squeeze.

The message from "Tim.." contains these words:

Took me an hour with the grinding paste and £16 worth of new valves to repair the wife's Clio head.

Why is replacing the timing belt, which after all is one of the most critical items to be renewed at irregular intervals, designed to be such a nightmare on most vehicles?

I'm not a mechanic, but when I used to replace the cam belt all my old Astra I thought how much simpler the task would have been if there was a removable cover inside the wheel arch, an engine mount on each side of the belt instead of through the middle, and three locking studs for correct alignment.

Vauxhall certainly did something which in my opinion every other manufacturer should have copied, which was to design the clutch on the mark two Astra so that it could be easily replaced in situ in as little as 30 minutes.

My guess is that if motor racing or the military required a complete cam belt assembly to be replaced within a matter of minutes, the engine designers would come up with it in no time.

The problem is im no mechanic so im afraid id have to let someone else do the job and ive been quoted near a grand.Anyone want a renault with a broken cam belt?

The message from "Ivan" contains these words:

Because the original buyer rarely gets that far, having sold the car long before that. The maker doesn't give a toss about the second hand market.

And then committed the cardinal sin of designing engines with the water pump driven from the cam belt!

Chris

Which I automatically replaced on both my petrol and diesel Astras when changing the cam belts, so it didn't cause me any problems.

Very wise. Of course, if the pump had failed before the belt change was due, as so many have, it would have been a different story. ;-)

Chris

Unfortunately this is the world that we're being conditioned to accept, I'm pretty sure that even the average family saloon will be designed to wind up in a scrap yard after four or five years of use, despite all the noises from the government about their environmental concerns of the amount of stuff going into landfills.

The bottom line is that they don't really give a toss, because it creates more employment and more in the way of tax revenues.

People nowadays have a totally different concept on such matters (even myself I'm ashamed to admit) for instance, we were looking at some washing machines the other day and there was one listed at £169, I remarked to my wife that for the washing requirements of a couple such as ourselves if it only lasted three years before being dumped (excluding the cost of washing powder and electricity) it would work out at around a pound a week, certainly a lot cheaper than a launderette.

Thing is Chris that that could apply to so many things, we often read here about premature failures where the tacky plastic tensioners disintegrate long before their set time for replacement, a not unusual response being for the manufacturer to half the recommended interval for changing!

The message from "Ivan" contains these words:

The bearing on ours is going. Bloody thing is moulded into the backplate of the drum and appears to be no longer available. The rest of the machine is fine - but seems likely to be consigned to being taken apart by a small boy follwed by a trip to the recycling bin due to poor design and poor parts availability.

Bother.

It'll be a standard bearing. It's a chemical metal challenge.

The message from "Duncan Wood" contains these words:

Hmm - the glass reinforced nylon it's moulded into is fairly substantial

- what I really want is a proper spare.

We're still using our 20 year old Hotpoint, the brushes need replacing in the motor every few years (a 5 minute job with the lid off) and a complete set of bearings with drum spider, total cost less than 15 quid (trade). I've replaced a door seal and a couple of other bits and pieces but spares are still widely available and dirt cheap, also when you get to know it the whole machine is a piece of cake to work on... why don't they make 'em like that nowadays?

BTW Guy, I was only thinking the other day that I hadn't seen you around for a while, good to see you're still OK.

In message , Ivan writes

Rubbish! Cars today are lasting longer and running higher mileage's than they have ever done.

The message from "Ivan" contains these words:

I unsubscribed for a holiday and neglected to return.

Plenty of circa 20 year 'old' motors still running quite happily on the road, when you say 'cars today' do you mean, stuff made within the last 5/6 years?.. in which case we'll have to wait another 15 years to find out how many of them are still left.

Both my old Astra's each had circa 200,000 miles on the clock over a 20 year period, and I can honestly say that any 'major' mechanical problems I experienced were absolutely nil.

Also it's not necessarily how long a car will last if it has enough money spent on it, spares and repairs are now so expensive on modern vehicles that I've seen posters to this very newsgroup with 6 or7 year old problem cars told to scrap them, because they're just not worth spending a couple of grand getting the thing fixed.. btw the OP didn't say how old is Renault was.

Wot, from the holiday?