Hi,
I'm new here so hoping that this post is ok and in the right place (although a bit long), apologies if it's not and please tell me where it would best belong.
Firstly I'm driving an 03 plate Zafira elegance with 150k on it, good condition in and out and a great family car. I have limits experiance but will try anything once so here I go 🙂
I have a problem with my timing chain which started to rattle a week or so ago at start up but only intermittently for a minute or two. I looked at possible causes and found various forums which explained the symptoms and watched various videos.
Obviously prime culprit was timing chain so I stopped using car and called around for pricing. I was quoted £715+vat fixed price local garage parts & labour and the local Vx dealer parts £315+vat and around 6hrs @ £90+vat, plus extra labour and parts if needed so min £855+vat. This is more than I would be happy spending due to age and mileage, so I thought I would investigate further myself and try more economical options first. Btw I have some experience of marine
So after reading various forums I decided to do an engine flush to see if maybe I was lucky and just the tensioner was slightly blocked. I changed filter prior to flush and found some alloy shavings which I knew could have been caused by the chain being slack and rubbing on chain cover. So put flush and new filter and she made no noise when on flush, then removed flush, checked filter and no shavings so hoped that tensioner had been blocked and was now cleared.
However, put new oil and started up and back with the noise again until she warmed up. At this point I thought ok has to be the tensioner as flush was low viscosity sae20 and was getting tension on chain, whereas 5w-30 was having to warm up first to pressurise tensioner. So thought I would look at tensioner, to do this I thought I had best take cam cover off to insure I could hold chain from slacking while tensioner out.
I now have cover off and have found that the front guides top bolt has sheared (photo attached) and can see bottom of guide possibly still in place with other bits visible further down. I have seen various fixes for the sheared bolt from helicoil to adapted access plug to oversized bolts. I was wondering if anyone could suggest the best solution for this, as most of these fixes appear to done with engine out of situ, which allows easy access for clearing remaining bolt which is sheared.
As I am going to do chains myself assuming nothing else crops up as I dismantle it,
I may have more questions as I go along, I have seen evocarlos (I'm assuming you may be reading this in which case is it ok to pm you?) appears to be the most suggested source for guidance on timing chains, however any other thoughts or suggestions would be really helpful.
Thanks
Noel
