Forum Replies Created
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I was thinking of belt driven (D)OHC engines, since thats what I see most.
On the TU and XU series engines (CItroën, Peugeot) you put simple pegs in the flywheel and in the cam belt gear(s) to locate the timing. No need to even open anything (except the plastic upper timing belt cover, which is held on by 2 bolts.)
On the Renault K4J/K4M (and a bunch of others) you use a special flat tool to line up the slots in the cams, and a specific length pin to locate the camshaft. I really don’t like how this engine used un-keyed timing gears, but thats another story.
I know some engines (GM?) there is a special shaped plate you bolt down over the camshaft lobe to hold it in the correct orientation, Of all these, thats probably the most expensive special tool. 😛
As you said, I think chain driven engines are much harder because the chain is usually under a sealed cover and/or buried quite deeply.
As far as rotating belt engines backwards to check, well, if there is enough slop to be noticeable its probably in serious trouble. on the other hand, belt driven engines usually have a simple plastic cover, so you can just check visually and/or by feel to see if the belt is tight.
The only way I’d know is to use the specific tools (if required) to set the engine to its timing marks, and see if they all still line up. Some engines only need a locating peg in a hole, others need special tools, others again have clear visual markers, etc..
I had my timing belt off by a tooth once, the engine was down on power by a large amount (as in: it felt sluggish and felt like it had less than half its rated HP), so that might be an indicator?
Living on another continent, the shipping cost for the sample exceeds the cost of the oil change, so while it would be helpful to determine internal engine life (bearings and such), the initial goal of checking whether or not the oil can be run a little longer without replacing it completely misses the mark for me. Its not like its an expensive truck engine with 8 gallons of oil in there.
We have a local oil analysis company too (Shell has a lot of stuff here), but they charge something like $50-80 a sample, also really not worth it if you have cheap oil in a cheap-to-replace engine.
If I owned a $100k+ car, I’d be doing used oil analysis. As-is, I have a $100 car with a $1000 engine in it, I’m somewhat curious, but I’d rather do another oil change instead.
I’ve had (cheap) disks come like this too, I just ran with them, it was never a problem, and the grooves got flattened out after a few weeks or so of daily use.
I agree that the milled crosshatch is preferable to a record groove, but as it turns out you can buy the expensive option and still get the record groove, so I guess price doesn’t say anything about manifacture method.
Mechanically they’re very good engines, however, if the oil changes haven’t been kept up with, the turbo might break sooner or later from soot deposits in its oil passages.
I’ve had this same problem, I had a very built car, replaced every single component from the bare (rust free) shell up with performance stuff.. then got rear-ended (very hard) by an SUV, the thing is bent beyond repair, and the insuranse goes “well, its a 20 year old car, here is $600”, to which I replied “hold on, I just put a few thousand $$ worth of parts on there, not even counting install cost”, and they were like “why would you even do that, its not a classic car”, and they paid me $600.
Now I’m going to do it a little differently, I bought a replacement shell (and by now, spent months (and hundreds of $) off-and-on repairing rust on it. 🙁 ), but I’m only going to drive it anywhere after the engine swap has been certified by our relevant gov’t agency* (so they can’t deny its existence and pay me for a base model engine), and I’ve had an automotive estimator appraise its value, and insure it as an oldtimer car with said appraisal as replacement value.
(*Europe, they’re much stricter about registering stuff about cars, if you swap an engine, the gov’t want to know, at the same time, this gives you a stick to defend yourself if the official registration shows your car is the only car with twice the HP over the stock model that they’re trying to pay you blue book value for.)
Well, it it doesn’t have it, it can’t be bad, right?
I guess I’d be looking at other rubber bushings and things in the rear suspension, but I really don’t know RWD cars that well.
Does it have one of those rubber drive disks? Or just the U joints?Well, I can imagine people trying to start it while running, its really really quiet, almost but not quite build-a-house-of-cards quiet inside, it ticks over at ~700 rpm idle which barely moves the needle on the tacho. (And my GF did it the first time she drove it..)
The starter has a sticker stating that its a remanifactured unit, but I can’t really tell when it was installed. It did look quite new. Maybe they just remanifactured it wrong and thats what caused it?
There isn’t any kind of shim involved with this setup, so I don’t think it would be that.
Now it starts quietly, so the repair was a succes. I’ll certainly be keeping my ears open for any change in noises though.
The vibration being independent of which gear excludes the engine and pretty much the gearbox too.
Does the prop shaft have a center bearing? check that for play. Especially if its got like rubber vibration dampening stuff and its all perished.
(Apparently a common problem with BMW’s, among others…)[quote=”Hinoki” post=173599]Once again, I cross the yellow line and venture into the Technician’s Only forum.
I apologize for the transgression, but I wanted to chime in.[/quote]
Another one here!Let me start off with this: not a certified car mechanic, but have home-rebuilt serveral cars, the first one before ever setting foot in an actual shop. The only time I even come into a shop is either for the mandatory annual safety inspection (where I *have* to watch in order for them to tell me what, if anything, is gonna need fixing), or something has gone wrong in a confusing way and I can’t get a diagnose (by) myself.
[quote=”gmule” post=171837]I hate them too. Just let me do my job please.[/quote]
Sure, but can I quietly stand and watch? No asking questions needed. Will exchange conversation if required/desired. No grumpy face, no judging.
In fact, having the car on a lift is a good opportunity to check our the underside, and that pretty much means I won’t even be looking at what you’re doing, just at the rest of the car.[quote=”gmule” post=171837]You know who I hate the worst? Those guys that come in with a problem I spend time diagnosing it and then they go home and do the work themselves. [/quote]
So? I pay a day of my wage for one hour of your diagnostic time, I pay for the service of diagnostics, I can do the wrenching myself. I’ve only done this on 2 or 3 occasions though in the past 6 years, the techs at the shop I went to didn’t seem to mind this at all, they were/are quite nice.Oh, I just thought of something, when I go to the tire shop, I just bring them the wheels and tires and put them on the car myself at home. Not so much a torque nazi, but I really can’t deal with the lug bolts being air-hammered to 3x the specified torque, even if that wouldn’t damage stuff, they would still be impossible to get back off at the side of a road in case of a flat. (I’ve been there, I needed a 4 ft extension and my full weight standing on it, for bolts specced to 90 nm.) So I guess I do judge on shops where they use the impact gun to ‘torque’ wheel bolts.