Hi,
Sorry for the length of the tale...
Last week at 88k miles I had the cambelt changed at the main dealer who has serviced the car from new (May 04).
On collection, it drove ok until I needed to pull away quite quickly at a busy junction - it was very slow to pick up (like turbo-lag). I put this down to me not giving it enough right foot but noticed it again the following day. I was going to take it back to the dealer but that evening on a motorway run it suffered a chronic loss of power - any slight incline it could not maintain speed. I got off the motorway and found it was very feeble up to 2000rpm and then above 2000 it suffered sever juddering. I gave up and called the AA who recovered the vehicle to the dealer.
My assumption was that it was a timing issue but the dealer insists that they checked the timing, ECU etc and it was all correct. On further inspection, they found 2 cracked rocker arms which they have replaced. They have now given the car back with a clean bill of health and it seems to sound, feel and drive ok.
My questions are.....
What would cause 2 rockers to fail if it was not timing related?
What else might be damaged? and if there is anything, should I be asking for this to be checked out?
Whilst I'm very pleased that the dealer not even mention charging for the remedial work, am I being ungrateful/cynical in thinking there may be a hidden agenda here??
Having read some other posts in this forum relating to belt failures, I'm a little less anxious as it seems that if the rockers cracked as a result of a timing issue, they will presumably have saved any significant damage to pistons and valves.
Any comments will be welcome.
Thanks.
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Sounds like they did get the valve timing wrong and a piston has hit a couple of valves, thus breaking the rockers. Not good, but I think the rockers are designed to fail in this way; saves more serious damage, hopefully!
Does it seem to drive OK now? If it does then I don't think I'd worry.
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Did they charge you for the work replacing the broken rockers?
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Maybe they did the cambelt job badly, it caused the damage while still in the workshop, and then they corrected the timing and though it seemed OK and they had got away with it and so gave it back to you?
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Hi,
I think you may have hit the nail on the head there. They probably caused some slight cracks in the workshop and it was only after driving for a while that they failed completely. Now I just have to hope that they checked them all for signs of cracking or I may be going round the loop again!
Thanks for the replies folks.
S
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Did they charge you for the work replacing the broken rockers?
I was wondering the same thing. I would seriously hope not given the tremendous coincidence between rockers failing, and the garage recently changing the timing belt.
If the timing was so far out when you picked the car up, I doubt the engine would have run properly at all. As hamsafar said, it sounds to me like they started it up, realised their mistake, corrected the timing, and handed it back to you hoping they'd got away with it. Either way, unless you believe in incredible coincidences, it's pretty unlikely the rockers chose that moment to fail on their own, indepedently, and it strikes me their poor workmanship caused this problem.
The garage got lucky. On some diesels like the Ford 1.8 unit, the valves are dead vertical, and the followers sit directly under the camshaft and with no rockers or other "linkage". In this case, it would have probably hammered the valve back up through its guide, breaking the cam and tearing the camshaft bearing caps out of the head. That would have seriously cost them.
When main dealers get stuff like this wrong, it beggars belief.
Edited by DP on 06/11/2009 at 11:55
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Almost certainly caused by the dealer making a pig's ear of the cam belt change. However, evidence suggests that the HDi can be considered almost 'safe' for a cambelt failure incident, as it just breaks a couple of rockers. I remember DL posting on here that they had had the head off an HDi with broken rockers and all the valves were still liquid tight so they just put it back on. Just hope that they recovered all the needle rollers out of the cam area....!
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Hi,
Sorry, I didn't make it clearer in my original post - no charge was made. I was ready for a fight but (even though there was nothing wrong!) it was 'on the house'.
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It seems to be driving ok now so I'm hoping all is well!
S
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Considering the possibel downside I would consider an independent inspection and then go back to them with the list of faults. If you leave it too long and something goes bang you will have a BIG bill.
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