Wednesday 25 May 2016

Cambelt Change



Whilst my engine was a new crate engine it was actually built in 2004 so the cambelt was 12.5 years old with only 3.5 years and ~12,000 miles.  After a discussion at the last WSCC Dorset meeting about preparing the cars for the European Tour I got a call from Malcolm who had bought a couple of Gates belts for £25 each and changed them on Chris' and his own car and offered to change both Colin's and mine before we left.  I'd already bought a full kit with pulleys and a water pump and had all the necessary tools but my cams weren't at the standard Ford settings after the 'swing' at Northampton Motorsports so I'd delayed fitting it until I'd worked out how to retain the offset.



















Malcolm and Dale offered to help me work out a method and we agreed for them to come over on Tuesday night.  In preparation I removed the bonnet, HT leads, spark plugs, cam cover, Aux belt , water pump pulley and all the cambelt covers leaving only the crankshaft pulley.  Malcolm and Dale arrived at 7:30pm and set to worked, the engine was set to TDC on a locking pin and the crank pulley removed.  The cams and caps were marked with a paint pen which was then scribed to provide a very accurate position marking.  Once this was done the cambelt was removed and replaced as normal and then the cams 'swung' back to the painted/scribed offset marking.  After manually cranking the engine through a full cycle and the cams checked against the paint/scribed markings with one needing a minor adjustment.  Once this was done Malcolm and Dale left me to refit all the covers etc and give the engine a quick start to make sure everything was okay - total time 1.5 hours.  As the engine was new and we were only changing the belt based on ageing I retained the existing pulleys and water pump and will change them all in 5 years.

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