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Cam belt cost please

trickydicky

By trickydicky
in Motorhome Matters

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hallii Veteran

hallii

Posted
Posted

Be careful of cheap! Cheap cambelts can and do snap after changing.

 

Insist on an original manufacturers part or a well know brand.

 

Better still, avoid the damn things like the plague, I ONLY buy vehicles fitted with a chain now, I learned my (expensive) lesson.

 

H

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euroserv Mentor

euroserv

Posted
Posted

Just be aware that chains, while they don't break as often as belts; can fail and the tensioners used with them are just as likely to fail as those used with belts. They are less accessible and cause more harm when they fail than they do on cam belt equipped vehicles.

 

At least with a belt you change the tensioners with the belt. With a chain you will have a false sense of security and no planned inspection or replacement of these important auxiliary parts.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble but these are the facts.

 

Nick

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hallii Veteran

hallii

Posted
Posted
euroserv - 2013-08-27 3:17 PM

 

Just be aware that chains, while they don't break as often as belts; can fail and the tensioners used with them are just as likely to fail as those used with belts. They are less accessible and cause more harm when they fail than they do on cam belt equipped vehicles.

 

At least with a belt you change the tensioners with the belt. With a chain you will have a false sense of security and no planned inspection or replacement of these important auxiliary parts.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble but these are the facts.

 

Nick

 

 

Ah! but chains and tensioners when worn will rattle, particularly at start up, so there is a good indication that the chain and tensioners need replacing. Sudden and catastrophic failure of a chain and tensioners without warning is unusual. Not true of cambelts they can and do fail without warning.

 

I will still choose a chain over belt every time.

 

H

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hallii Veteran

hallii

Posted
Posted
Airstream - 2013-08-27 8:12 PM

 

Hallii,

Are you suggesting that C&M auto use inferior parts in there cambelt changes? if so I suggest you offer evidence to support your claims

Over to you

Ray

 

No Ray, I make no inference regarding any particular company at all.

I simply make the point that it is important to make sure that only quality parts are used.

Since I have no experience of C&M I would assume that they do use quality parts?

Anyway, I hope C&M have had a good (and free) exposure to publicity?

 

H

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Retread24800 Mentor

Retread24800

Posted
Posted

Will be bringing the Van back to the UK at those prices!

In Germany I had a belt change for 300€ but the belt kit including the tensioners, follower and Pump is about 280€ here in France.

Dayco sell their kit less pump for between £107 and £78, and the same parts from SKF seem to go for between £178 and £117.60, the pump will set me back another £80. mind you those are the on line prices, with the kind garage mans mark up?

And then there's the labour......................................:D

 

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Dave Newell Grand Master

Dave Newell

Posted
Posted
peter - 2013-08-27 9:33 PM

 

£500 for a belt change. What a rip off. I did mine on my previous fiat 2.8 and it took about 3 hrs.

 

Not an entirely fair comparison Peter, the old 2.8 was a pretty straight forward job the new X250 belt is a bit more involved and the parts are dearer, the water pump is a large unit which includes the lower portion of the engine front plate and is expensive in its own right. The belt, tensioners, idlers and water pump for a 2.3 are close to £200 from memory.

 

D.

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Airstream Collaborator

Airstream

Posted
Posted

One for Nick,

 

How often and at what kind of mileage have you had water pumps fail? - from prev thred Nick ran his Ducs without belt change for nearly 200,000 MILES?

 

I can not think of a good reason to replace a water pump at 10/20k miles if they will go for 200k miles - rubber bands I can see detriorating with age but water pumps?

 

I have never had one fail in the last 50 years and some 1.5 million miles of driving

 

Did have a timing chain go on my BMW Isetta

 

Ray

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Guest peter

Guest peter

Posted
Posted
Dave Newell - 2013-08-28 6:20 AM

 

peter - 2013-08-27 9:33 PM

 

£500 for a belt change. What a rip off. I did mine on my previous fiat 2.8 and it took about 3 hrs.

 

Not an entirely fair comparison Peter, the old 2.8 was a pretty straight forward job the new X250 belt is a bit more involved and the parts are dearer, the water pump is a large unit which includes the lower portion of the engine front plate and is expensive in its own right. The belt, tensioners, idlers and water pump for a 2.3 are close to £200 from memory.

 

D.

Why would you want to replace the water pump with a belt change?. Surely they're not that fragile, with all the advancements in engineering technology. But then, this is Fiat, and we all know about the cockups they've made in the last few years.
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Dave Newell Grand Master

Dave Newell

Posted
Posted
peter - 2013-08-28 10:14 PM

 

Dave Newell - 2013-08-28 6:20 AM

 

peter - 2013-08-27 9:33 PM

 

£500 for a belt change. What a rip off. I did mine on my previous fiat 2.8 and it took about 3 hrs.

 

Not an entirely fair comparison Peter, the old 2.8 was a pretty straight forward job the new X250 belt is a bit more involved and the parts are dearer, the water pump is a large unit which includes the lower portion of the engine front plate and is expensive in its own right. The belt, tensioners, idlers and water pump for a 2.3 are close to £200 from memory.

 

D.

Why would you want to replace the water pump with a belt change?. Surely they're not that fragile, with all the advancements in engineering technology. But then, this is Fiat, and we all know about the cockups they've made in the last few years.

 

The OP asked for a cost estimate for belt AND WATER PUMP.

 

On this particular engine the belt drives the water pump and generally held consensus of opinion within the trade (rightly or wrongly) is to replace the pump at the same time as the belt simply because if the pump subsequently fails it will drop the belt and write off the engine. Extra £100 or so to replace pump with belt orpossible £2k plus bill for an engine later? No brainer for me.

 

D.

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Guest 1footinthegrave

Guest 1footinthegrave

Posted
Posted

Although my van is an elderly 2.8jtd, I had quotes varying for a belt change and tensioners from £170, to £540, seems like there are a few inconsistencies out there, with one outfit saying they had never had to change the tensioner rollers on the 2.8jtd as they were steel, but some later engines were plastic rollers and prone to failure, my question is, who the hell do you believe as to the cost and information given when you are putting your vehicle into "professional" hands :-S

 

especially as one major dealers quote included replacement of the water pump which they advised, and yet another said the water pump was not driven by the cambelt on my engine. (!)

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Muswell Mentor

Muswell

Posted
Posted
peter - 2013-08-28 10:14 PM

 

Dave Newell - 2013-08-28 6:20 AM

 

peter - 2013-08-27 9:33 PM

 

£500 for a belt change. What a rip off. I did mine on my previous fiat 2.8 and it took about 3 hrs.

 

Not an entirely fair comparison Peter, the old 2.8 was a pretty straight forward job the new X250 belt is a bit more involved and the parts are dearer, the water pump is a large unit which includes the lower portion of the engine front plate and is expensive in its own right. The belt, tensioners, idlers and water pump for a 2.3 are close to £200 from memory.

 

D.

Why would you want to replace the water pump with a belt change?. Surely they're not that fragile, with all the advancements in engineering technology. But then, this is Fiat, and we all know about the cockups they've made in the last few years.

 

My brother had a Golf. Low mileage but a lot of small journeys. The water pump seized on a motorway in France last summer and the cambelt failure wrecked the engine. My 94 year old mother was in the car so that was an additional complication. The insurers said the car was not worth recovering.

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Guest 1footinthegrave

Guest 1footinthegrave

Posted
Posted
Muswell - 2013-08-29 10:00 AM

 

1footinthegrave - 2013-08-29 9:28 AM

 

I'm going to err on the side of caution, I'll change my engine every 12000 miles. :-S

 

You can't escape ....... my T4 automatic gearbox failed at 500 miles and had to be replaced.

 

That's the point I was trying to make, conversely a friend of mine has a vintage mini cooper 1959 with the original engine and all ancillaries that to his knowledge have never been replaced. ;-)

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euroserv Mentor

euroserv

Posted
Posted

Oooh, there are a few points here to get my teeth into....

 

First, and to answer a question from Airstream; Never. That is how often we have changed a water pump on a 2.3 Ducato.

Not completely true actually; we needed to remove an engine mount at some point for another job and had a problem with stripped threads in the mount which was also part of the water pump, but that is it.

 

I agree with Dave Newell that accepted wisdom is to change a water pump while carrying out a cambelt change but because of the number of vehicles that we own, and the empirical evidence that we have gathered we can decide to avoid extra costs where we can. While this does involve an element of risk; so did my decision not to change cam belts until 200,000 miles, which has since been revised down to 175,000 miles due to a near-miss! I also have the luxury of a couple of written off vans with good engines sitting outside ready for transplants!

 

Replacing the cam belt on a 2.3 is a much more difficult job that the old 2.8 for a number of reasons, but mostly due to the amount of room that you have to remove the covers and other items being severely limited. It is very time consuming and frustrating. Some mechanics have wished that they had removed the engine to do it! The setting up of the correct tension of the belt is not easy either, and one of the idler pulleys is a bugger to remove and replace. The main tensioner (for the record) MUST have a new screw fitted and not the old one. This is extremely important unless you want your timing to be rather variable in the future!

 

The 2.8, by contrast and especially the JTD variant was a piece of cake to do. There were failures of tensioners even though they were steel. The bottom line seems to be that whether the actual pulley is made of steel or plastic does not seem to matter very much; both are durable but at the middle of the pulley is a metal bearing which over time will wear out and that is where the problem lies. Always change the tensioners.

 

I would like to add that the Fiat 2.3 is not unique by any means when it comes to restricted access for changing a timing belt, and that other manufacturers make as many stupid design errors as Fiat do. It is only because the proportion of motor caravans built on Fiat chassis is so high that the Fiat issues are so widely discussed. In the big wide world of commercial vehicles we just fix them and move on. So do people that run Merc's and Fords. If we get fed up with them we don't buy any more of them. Simple.

 

Nick

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