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by agumonkey
2 days ago
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It was a nissan micra k12, and I used the wrong term, it's not a belt it's a timing chain (metallic) allegedly designed for longer longevity, but there was an industry issue (bad alloy or something) that made them stretch and lose sync with the timing chain counter circuit. The ECU would trip and rapidly the engine would just stop (quite dangerous depending on which road your on). Car mechanics had to swap the whole engine.. we sold it not long after that. |
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So, we towed it up to my house with my mate's Suzuki Jeep, and I set about removing the head. Sure enough, belt snapped, wrapped round the cam pulley, all eight valves bent.
It turns out, my mum's neighbour used to use K10s as her driving school cars, and when one had been written off in an accident her husband had pulled the engine. But, now he wanted his shed cleared to get his boat in, and would I mind giving him a hand? Yes of course I'd give him a hand, and he gave me the engine.
So 25 quid or so of my hard-earned dole money and I bought a Haynes manual for the Micra (which I still have, the manual not the car), a head gasket set, a timing belt set, and six tins of beer, and set about reassembling the engine with the good head off the engine from the shed. It took a few hours of a nice Sunday afternoon and by early evening it was back together and would start and run, come up to temperature, no bubbles in the coolant, no funny noises, smooth as silk.
I put another 85,000 miles on that in the next four years before it eventually got to the point where it was just too rotten to consider welding any more.
I kind of wish I'd just chucked it into a nice dry shed and left it until I could properly strip the shell and weld it up. It would be tax and MOT exempt by now, a historic vehicle! Can you imagine, a historic D-reg Micra?