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[nixoro]

Boxing Day I drove too and from London fine no worries

Next day excessive clicking from the engine so thought Id do the checks.

Due to my recent troubles with my car I thought I'd check the timing and discovered to my horror the Cambelt being excessively slack tried to retension the belt and the rear tensioner pointer moves so far with tension then tighten the centre bolt and the tension drops off.

Tried rotating the engine and the pointer does not move as it should.

Happier in a way as the timing is all spot on as it has not jumped any teeth on the belt so going to try a new kit first and take it from there.

Time will tell but the current kit has only been on the car 15k and been on only 1 and half years.

Can anyone make any suggestions as to what damage may have incurred other the piston to valves hitting.

[nixoro]

Does anyone have any bad experiences of gates kits my local motorfactors have a kit on one side for me £78 inc vat so not too bad.

Edging my bets but worth a go

[Kevin Wood]

Sounds nasty - and hopefully a bullet dodged there. I've fitted Gates kits and they look to be decent quality. They are a quality belt manufacturer and I believe the tensioners supplied were visibly the same as the GM ones I took off. Same bearing manufacturer IIRC. Can't comment on longevity though...

The belt had markings on, too, unlike recent GM belts.

Any idea what the failure mode was? Has the tensioner bearing collapsed or is it a problem in the sprung part of the tensioner?

Kevin

[Marks DTM Calib]

Sounds pricey for a gates kit (there not bad, not made keen on the belts)....genuine is only £68.61+vat trade club.

Buypartsby do a contitech kit (which I quite like) for less than that....

I suspect no damage has occured.....I assume the water pump has not turned and is in the correct position, its drive is off centre so can affect tension and if in the wrong position will mean the tensioner wont be able to be set correctly.

[nixoro]

Thankyou guys for the responses

The gates kit is the only kit I can get my hands on today for fitting tomorrow.

Current state of my car is its cams are locked and the bottom crank is set to TDC and the waterpump appears not to have moved.

The waterpump still looks in pretty good condition with no visible leaks or damage.

Shall hopefully be fitting the kit tomorrow and finding out the fate of my car.

Not sure the waterpump needs doing what with only doing 15k tempted to do it for piece of mind.

Abit gutted as the kit on there was supplied is from autovaux and is genuine GM supposedly.

[nixoro]

Well I can confirm the gates kit is not all that the new kit was not tensioning properly so I took the kit back

Before I fitted another kit I ensured the camshaft bearing bracket caps were torqued down properly as all the noise appeared to be coming from the left hand cam.

Shelled out £98 for a genuine vx kit from my local dealer fitted and now the car is running.

Although it is still a little lumpy on start up tick over is fine.

Discovered I am getting white smoke but this is not excessive like it was and when moving a long I now have no white smoke so I am going to be doing the injector seals for piece of mind just waiting on the seals to come into vauxhall.

I also discovered yesterday that the engine management light has been on and it comes on intermittently did the paper clip test I get one code of 0130 Heated Exhaust Gas Oxygen (HEGO) sensor which I'm presuming is the lambda sensor shall be trying my spare to see if this fixes the problem and clears the code.

All in all its been a busy few days but at least now my car is driveable again.

Just thought I'd update & thanks for the help

[Marks DTM Calib]

Glad you caught it in time.

Not seen them fail myself so its very unlucky.