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Timing Belt Aftermath

D

DasPirate

New CEG'er
Joined
Feb 3, 2007
Messages
6
Some of you may remember my thread asking for help diagnosing a problem with my girlfriend's '99 Zetec. Well, after digging into it, I found that the lower idler pulley grenaded, with ball bearings bouncing around and the outer race rolling around the inner race, producing a chainlink-fence rattling sound.

Here's a pic of what I could find of the idler.
Pulley%20Destruction.JPG



It's also worth mentioning that this will, in all likelihood, be the LAST ford I ever work on. While I mean no personal offence to the car, it was NOT designed with serviceability in mind. And while the idea of a pin to hold the crank at TDC is a good one, it was poorly implemented in that it was damn near impossible to get to the plug due to the precat exhaust manifold, and even more difficult to get the pin in and out. Needless to say, I've been spoiled by how easy it is to work on my Saturn. I also have increased respect for those of you here who willingly put up with the difficulty of these things on a regular basis.

That is all.
 
I've had a fused/stuck idler and WP pully before (which I sued Ford and won for about $1600 in repairs), but nothing that bad.:shocked:
 
I suppose I can see it being much easier if one knows the "tricks," but I maintain that spending 6 hours in a cold student parking garage makes it a very unpleasent experience.

That said, where are some of the more inconvient or strange places that you've had to make serious repairs? I trust this could get interesting.
 
That looks like what happened to my SE last November. Mine was so bad it split the belt into thirds and blew a hole in the lower timing cover :blackeye: I'm surprised it still started and made it halfway to work that morning! :shocked: It was a PITA, no matter how many times you've done one or how long you've been working on cars. I think my dad and I spent about 10 hours or more on mine.
 
That's exactly what I was trying to avoid when I started to get noise in my front end. BTW, I was the second one to reply to your thread with my explanation.
 
I changed a coolant hose on a supercharged Focus ZX3 150 miles away from my garage and toolbox at night in 45 degree weather with a T-shirt and a smile. Your move. :cool:
 
ChattavegasSE said:
I changed a coolant hose on a supercharged Focus ZX3 150 miles away from my garage and toolbox at night in 45 degree weather with a T-shirt and a smile. Your move. :cool:
Click to expand...

LOL. Do I hear a challenge? I'm not sure you really want to hear it, and I'm sure many other people have had harder jobs than I, but allow me to say this: 45º is balmy. Also, my relationship with my Saturn has been defined by a long series of unfortunate events.

I first had to replace my timing chain in the snow. It was 10ºF at the time.
Then came a transmission swap, which wasn't to bad, but I only had an 18" breaker bar to get off the cradle bolts, which were torqued to 160ft-lbs. Then I decided to do an engine swap, during which I lived with somebody else for four days to figure it all out (nobody had done a similar swap before). He had a gravel driveway which made moving the crane about very difficult. Then, because of the different intake manifold, it dumped all of its coolant out on me on two occasions, once at a drag strip, and once at work. The latter required me to take the intake manifold completely off in the parking lot to repair the metal sleeve inserts (it was a plastic manifold).

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of it off the top of my head. Anyway, that's my spiel. It's time to get some zees. I'm out.
 
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