Hi everyone, been lurking around here for a good few months now so thought it time to introduce myself.

Bought my 2nd coop in August last year, a standard, silver 16vt with just under 100K on the clock. She came with an almost fsh (just one stamp missing), loads of receipts, a reasonably recent respray, new discs & pads all round, and a few issues that needed fixing.

No pics to load up yet as I'm rubbish at that sort of thing, but you can see some pics of her in the social events section from the last S.Wales meet.

4 days after I picked her up I parked up at a local supermarket, went shopping, came back to find some chav scumbag had keyed the length of the bootlid, keyed and kicked the bonnet and left black rubber from their silver shadows around the filler cap and the sticky up aerial. Thankfully, some industrial t-cut type stuff worked its magic.

Over the past 8 months I've used this forum religiously and diagnosed many of the problems that needed fixing. Items replaced include bonnet strutts, battery, radiator, rear wheel bearing, boot seal, fuel vapour valve thingy, lambda sensor, thermostat, had a split vacuum pipe sorted, headlight bulbs :D, 2nd hand turbo from a certain auction site and I've just ordered an ECU temp sensor from AA. The turbo was changed as the original was smoking badly when I gave it a bit of a blast, shame the 'new' one is pretty much the same. At least I've now got a spare to send off for a recon at my leisure. There's still some things that I'm not happy with and will be posting in the help section soon.

She's been in an accident at some point and had some engine work a few years back. I'd love to know, in laymans terms, what has happened to cause the following to need doing? "A&R strip cylinder head, reface head, re-fit valve seats, 8 x inlet valves, 8 x exhaust valves, lop in vales and rebuild, re-fit head".

I've loved the styling of coops since I saw my first banana one as a teenager and really hope that I'm not trying to 'polish a turd' as people say. One day I'll win the lottery and get a Plus, until then this will more than make up for it.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I look forward to talking to you all in the technical problems section!!

Mark

the work looks like a cambelt failure, welcome to the forum and the endless money and paranoia that follows!

Welcome! Glad to see you've been using the forum to research anything which needs doing - incredible amount of knowledge on here

Sorry to hear about the damage to your car - some people really do deserve shooting...

Hi and welcome

hello and welcome

Welcome to the forum, enjoy!

Yo!

Second opinion - cambelt died and took the engine with it. This is not uncommon... you will have seen all the threads about cambelt replacement times - on the 16 it's probably best to do it every 24000/2 years, 36000/3 years maximum. Paul at Motormech in Birmingham - not *too* far from you - is good with 16v/vt.

Not to give you paranoia - but in many cases, valves meeting pistons after a belt break has caused shock damage to the bottom end bearings; these may last twenty or thirty thousand miles before they die. Be very careful about your oil levels and pressure.

Neil

Thanks for the welcome guys!

Barnacle - The paranoia has been set to maximum now, seeing as its done 32,000 miles since! Oil is regularly checked and pressure seems ok, dropping to a min of 1.1 bar if I'm stuck in traffic for ages, usually just under 1.5 when hot though. Should I be on the look out for any tell tale signs?

Mark

3rd the belt failer, hi btw

Your oil pressures look fine. You may have been lucky... but I'd be looking to change the belt again pretty soon.

Welcome to the Forum