Hi folks,

I know this may be a bit late to add here, but I had a 16 valve K11 new shape Micra, and the timing chain went noisy. Sometimes it went quiet, depended on the day!

One day it went really noisy, and it went on me totally, and the chain broke into two while in between gear changes, and not "thrashed" BTW, normal everyday driving; but I quickly dipped the clutch, so no damage done to the engine. it cut out and that was that. I had a tow home, not far, about 2 miles.

Mileage BTW was about 45K on the K11 Micra. I think some bad service history with not enough oil changes etc. had caused this chain to fail. Engine seems really quiet otherwise and OK, it is a well nippy car.

I bought a kit, with tensioner etc, and chain for £80 in 2003, and replaced it OK at home in the garage. One had a groove in it so worn away on the old one.

Haynes manual said I would have to remove the engine and sump, but I managed to do it just removing the rocker and side cover only, as it seemed obvious when taking it down that all this work was unwarranted.

I rotated the camshaft to close all of the valves, and then raise cylinder one to top dead centre. Then I positioned the cam so exhaust and inlet valves were closed on cylinder 1. How I did this was with a long scrwdriver in No1 cyl, and watching the valves cycle when turning the camshaft to get the valve timing right.

After this I replaced the tensioner, and the chain, noting the direction of travel for the split-link.

I replaced the covers and gaskets plus sealer where applicable.

After this I replaced the engine oil and filter.

The car fired up 1st time, and I had no timing error, or oil leaks afterwards, and the engine was so quiet you could hardly hear it, especially inside the car!

The job took me one evening, and went smoothly! (makes a change, lol).

After this I kept the car for 6 months before buying a brand new Micra DCi 1.5 5 door, (excellent and very very economical car I will say, with cheap tax too), as I needed more doors in my car.

The little K11 Micra was fine and fast too, but only two doors was causing problems for my older passengers so it had to be changed!

OK fast forward to 2012 - I need to replace my cambelt at 60K in my DCi - I wonder how that will go, lol.

I have thought of changing my car too, but no more DCi Micra's are available, and I dont like the 3 cylinder underpowered and unbalanced petrol cars, so may have to go for a Qashqai, especially now that they have the super efficient low tax class diesels available! Or maybe a diesel Note! All good motors aren't they?

I just don't fancy a car with only 3 cylinders; it seems an odd number to me, and needs lots of extra metal inside there in the way of balancing shafts flying about to balance it all out, plus the extra revs and heavier right foot needed to get the same performance as a 4 cylinder car, which to me equals more wear and tear, and a shorter engine life, and a lot more noise inside the cabin, especially on motorways.

Edited by engineer11 on 26/05/2012 at 22:32