The van has done it again

[spuorgelgoog]

That's because in Aus it could take the AA equivalent a week to turn up, and you'd have been eaten by a spider before then.

Owain

[Jim Stewart]

why I was sure they didn't allow delete ....

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Jim Stewart laid this down on his screen :

Mine is a sprung pulley tensioner, so five pulleys to work it round in total, with a separate belt of the a/c. The spring pulley needed me to fabricate an especially thin socket, to be able to take the tension off. Both belts were the same age, but the 1/3 the length a/c belt was completely worn out, the main belt look good for much more service. The main belt had to be removed to swap out the a/c belt.

I put the extra wear on the a/c belt, as being due to it doing many more revolutions that the main belt.

[Jim Stewart]

cars are far too complicated these days....I buy on simplicity nothing else these days....mustangs are simple......

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Jethro_uk laid this down on his screen :

Mine has the emergency50mph wheel, which was an option, in a well in the boot. The well is deep enough for a a full size (very wide) spare, but I make use of the extra spare for a tow rope, jump leads, spare lamps, spare fluids etc..

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

Jim Stewart used his keyboard to write :

Much larger country, with potential to break down far from help and likely no mobile phone service to ring for help. Rather different from the UK and the EU.

[RJH]

OOI, do you know why there's no warning of things like low voltage in various states, and charge? I'd have thought it'd be trivial, given all the rest of the things an ECU manages.

Even my old 1963 Mini had an ammeter . . .

[charles]

A couple of weeks ago, I was on thenM3 in poringb rain doing about 60mph which I considerda safe speed in the circumstances. I was overtaken by a car with a yellow coloured front when -usually not to be driven over 50mph ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Don't they have a spring loaded jockey pulley?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You mean one more suited to a tractor?

[RJH]

Having only fitted belts with a tensioner, I quite like this tool-fit idea - saves the vagueness of the 'deflect 1/2" at mid-point', where that point is buried out of sight, and applies to what could well be a belt of different properties.

[NY]

I would expect that if a manufacturer said 'deflect by 1/2"' it would be measured at the point of the tensioner wheel rather than at some arbitrary point where the belt is not normally deflected. I'd also expect the measurement to be unique to the belt - ie if you get one that is more stretchy, its deflection point would be different.

Ideally the bracket that the tensioner wheel is attached to should have a calibrated scale so you can see how far from the neutral position you have to move it before tightening the locking bolt.

[Tim+]

This list is from 2015 but there are probably more non-interference engines about than you realise.

Tim

[NY]

"Harry Bloomfield"; "Esq." [e-mail]> wrote in message news:r3vt05$ult$ [e-mail]...

But even in the UK where distances are shorter and mobile phone coverage is

*more* widespread (although a long way short of universal), there is little that an RAC man can do if you call him out, unless he brings a spare tyre and a means of fitting it to the wheel and balancing the wheel+tyre combination. Unless they start to work like HGV mobile tyre crews and bring the complete wheel+tyre, taking away the old wheel for re-use by another customer, and dispense with the need for fitting the tyre to the wheel "in the field".

[Tim+]

Deflection at a midpoint or other accessible part *between* pulleys is the normal way to do it.

I imagine all modern belts are designed to be as ?un-stretchy? as possible but the difference in distance between pulleys on different engines means that a half inch of deflection on one engine won?t necessarily correspond to the same belt tension on another engine.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

Slide valves!

[The Natural Philosopher]

toothed belts do not NEED to be set to any great tension. More expensive to make esp. the pulleys but far longer lasting

[Jethro_uk]

The FIAT twin-cam Lampredi engine being a prime example. We made quite a few bob from fixing ones that other garages had managed to change the timing belt on and then just spin to start without checking. All 8 valves would need changing - if you were lucky.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Essential information for Nigeria, I'd say.

[NY]

"Jethro_uk" <jethro [e-mail] wrote in message news:r4057b$4b6$ [e-mail]...

My first boss had a piston on his desk as an "ornament". It had a hole crudely punched in the top face. He explained that it was a memento of a piston that he had to replace when the timing chain/belt broke and the valves went through the pistons. I'm not sure whether it was an interference engine, in that the valves and pistons occupy the same space at different times, or whether the failure of the timing mechanism caused valves to fly loose of their normal travel. He said it happened when he was doing 80 on the motorway, and he was lucky to survive because the engine jammed which locked the wheels until he managed to work out what was happening and get the clutch down.

I have "fond" memories of having the timing belt on my first diesel car changed at the manufacturer's stated mileage. Diesels are almost always interference engines, in order to achieve the required compression ratio. I took it to my local (non-dealer) garage in the village - they had done perfectly good work servicing the car etc. Having changed the belt and got the valves and pistons synchronised fine, they had to get the timing sensor working with the new belt: I presume something on the belt is sensed by a Hall effect sensor to determine the timing of the fuel injection. It took them several days to get the car running again, during which time I was without a car. Once evening I was cycling to the supermarket to buy as much food as I could fit in my rucksack, and they were still working on it well into the evening. There was a lot of spluttering and smoke from the exhaust as they kept trying to get it to keep firing. As I was coming back later on, I heard a shout of "Yessssssssssss!" and the guy came running out when his mate said I'd stopped to check on progress. They'd finally managed to get it running again. And it worked fine for another 50,000 miles (when I eventually sold it) so it's brief foray with random fuel injection timing hadn't done it any harm! I did get them to pay me for a new tank of fuel, because it had been full when I took the car in and was nearly empty when I got it back.

I should have realised that their competence was dubious after that incident, but they were convenient: it was only about 5 mins walk from home to the garage so I didn't need a lift there/back. I changed my mind a few years later when the "fan belt" broke and they replaced it without checking the pulley flanges (which were apparently bent - that could have been the cause of the belt breaking) so the replacement belt broke about 1000 miles later. They wouldn't give me any compensation for the labour and parts on the belt that they had replaced. The Pug garage that I took the car to the second time took one look at the original belt (ie before the village garage replaced it) and said immediately "there are the flange marks". But even their engineer's report didn't sway the village garage. So I stopped using them.

Interesting that after the belt broke it remained in the car and didn't fall onto the road... It must have got tangled up in the pulleys, tensioners and engine mounts.