What to do?

Well the inevitable happened today.

Driving to Sheffield and less than half a mile from my destination the car conks out at the lights and won't restart. A call to the AA and 2.5 hours later, my worst fear has been confirmed. Cambelt has had the teeth stripped off and it currently going to Torque Automotive.

It's only really just starting to sink in what has happened and not sure if I'm in the right frame of mind to even be at a clients site today (till Friday).

I still had a shed load of debt paying off (5 figures) and this year was going to be the year to try and clear a lot of it down, but now this has happened, I don't know if I even want to continue with the car.

Sorry to hear this.

What percentage of the five figures you spent will it cost to rectify?

Thats very bad luck mate. I just love your car. Chin up and sleep on it mate.

That is sad news mate, is she your daily driver and how long ago was the belt done?
BTW voted for repair

break it and sell all the good bits to me .

you know in your own heart that its going to be repaired and back on the road for Spaitalia 2015 .

gutted for you mate

Damnit Alexis, that's not good news.

It's a head-scratcher... you can still get a replacement engine, or all the bits to rebuild, but would you want standard after the last one? Or you're paying even more of a fortune to rebuild to the standard you already had...

My own experience is that there will be lots of bent valves (special from GR in your case?) plus probably some tiny dents in the pistons you can ignore, plus you'll want some new big end bearings. The crank and cams and head will probably be OK.

If you do rebuild it, you might consider the deltaparts 25mm belt conversion. The only reason it's not going on mine is that I want to keep the balance shafts. (It's around five hundred quid, but on an engine as expensive as yours it's probably good insurance.)

Gutted for you mate. Take it into storage for a while and commence rebuild in your own time. For me the debt reduction would come first.

Can you get the car to my garage in chesterfield?
Guarantee to be cheaper than anywere, unless you doing work yourself?

if it went at lights on tickover damage will be valves, pitons and bearings should be fine.
Worth taking a chance and just do cyl head.

Really gutted for you Begbie!

My head is with coupedummy! if it was me, i know i would be repairing it to be stronger and better! but probably over a long period of time on a budget not a "repair now, money's no object"

Definitely debt and money comes first if its bad enough to worry about it
Just shelve it sort your head out and buy bits here and there when they present themselves at decent prices and then sort it out when the times right!
All the best!

Very sad news mate, don't rush this one, I think you would regret it if you got rid of it, plus I can't see you driving an M3!

Alexis, really sorry to hear this.

What you don't do is bung money at it.

Either get what you can for it, focus on getting rid of the debt, then come at this again if the itch still needs scratching.

Or Sorn it, focus on getting rid of the debt, and then if the itch does not need scratching get what you can for it.

Repair it mate don't split such a nice 16vt

As a current, mapped, M3 driver coming from a 355bhp coupe, i agree the M3 isn't for you imho - it would feel gutless, but then anything will if you trash/break it. Same dilemma i faced 3 or 4 times and as you know i was stupid/brave enough to repair it every time.
Now its gone i miss it so much, to the point i nearly bought it back recently.........however we're all different and you're your own man with responsibilities, i just feel sorry its happened and would support whatever you decide

flog the parts and buy a nice standard car.

I feel your pain Alexis - been there myself on more than one occasion

However, as you well know, the car is worth very little in its current state (TBH, we all know that a modded Coupe running perfectly isn't worth very much either)

My recommendation would be to park the car up somewhere safe and dry and spend a year or two throwing the same money at your debt as you have done with the Coupe. Get yourself a half-decent oil-burner, such as an Alfa 156 or 147 - 50+ mpg will help with the cashflow and you won't feel the same traitorous feelings that you must have done driving that bloody Clio for all those years

The LAST thing you need to do is to make a decision in the next few days - walk away from it and see how you feel when the emotions have died down a bit - there's less chance you'll do something daft (like sell it)

Good luck

Sorry to hear this Alexis. Ive only seen your Coupe a couple of times but it really was quite the monster at the SRR day and left an impression on me!

I hope you can find a way to fix it, even if not right away, rather than break.

Sorry mate what wAs reason? Im sure belt change wasn't so long ago was it ? Was it power /torque ?.my vote was repair but as you say I haven't spent what you have.

First dibs on manifold and exhaust...
Gutted for you mate, without doubt the best spec'd modded 16vt on this forum for sometime!
I very much doubt that alexia would just swap his cylinder head for another one as the head is probably the most special/costly part of his car due to all the head work he had done by guy croft!
I think you need to work out the exact cost of repair before making any decisions bud, isn't it possible it could just be valve damage??
What I do know is that if anything major like this happens to mine after new turbo is fitted it WILL be broken this time, I'm already on my 2nd forged engine.... I estimate my 16vt has cost 12k plus since ownership, I won't be rebuilding engine again that is a certain fact!
Good luck buddy!!!

Nick

Well said

Evening all.

As I've been talking to Begbie all day on the phone. I can honestly say I'm gutted for this man.

He is in the sh*t luck club that me proccy, Nigel, Mario and a few other have been in.

All I can say is, If you break it for parts, you will still be out of pocket regardless.
If you repair it, you will have to spend out a fair wack again.

But.. One thing you will never EVER get back is that feeling of YOUR coupe.
You can strip it, and crush the shell ect
But you will miss it.

You will never be able to get it back.

And you Will miss it.
I will do what ever I can to help you mate!
Just sitting by the phone waiting for the AA to let me know it's there!

Chin up mate..

Take the financially sensible route, keep emotions out of it

Remember you've been there and done it

Begbie is far too attached to that coupe to not be emotionly evolved

I'd repair it, but over a period of time. You'd buy another car, but every time you saw a Coupe you'd be kicking yourself. Sensible route not an option, or you wouldn't be driving a coupe in the first place.

Gutted for you Begbie I haven't voted in the poll as I really couldn't decide.

I dread the day this might happen to mine. I wouldn't have the money to fix mine, but I would still keep it (even if it never got fixed and rotted away on my driveway) and get a cheap runaround until I could sort mine.

The above is probably my advice to you too - don't break, repair or sell until you're absolutely certain you have made the right decision.

Whatever you do, you have my support and again, so gutted for you

Gutted to hear this news Begbie, I mean it was nothing short of great pleasure being blown off course by your yellow peril at Spa, even if you went slightly down that road yourself so to speak
Have my video to catch the flash of broom anyway to always remind me

From what I've read your time and patience that's gone into this car is only to be surpassed by that which you will eventually afford, when the time is right, to nurse her back to health.

Although I had a temporary (near) lapse of faith, I'm glad I stuck with the BumbleBee, life just wouldn't be the same.

Really gutted for you Begbie.
That said, if youre breaking it im interessted in the engine with everything from the air filter to the back silencer and will pay good money for it..
Pm if intrested..

And as said before, take your time to think before making any desision on this..

For all your effort and time thats gone in to this, id be inclined to agree with Theresa. Don't make a rash decision. Buy a oil burner or a cheep small petrol car and use this as the daily. Park up the Coupe some where secure and when you have the money start again.
More important than any car is your long term financial goals. Meet these then come back to the car.

I almost voted but then changed my mind! I think this is something you have you have a good think about, even if it means parking it up somewhere for a few weeks/months/years.

If it was me I would do all I could to keep it, but you need to make sure your finances are in a fit state too.

Alexis,
I can only say how sad I am to hear of your BIG problem
As others have said, another car will not be your car. It is unique and no other car will really replace it, at least in your mind. It will always be your "first love". You've put too much energy and emotion into your car already, to do that all over again with a different car!?
Head, cut your losses and move on.
Heart, sort it when the time is right.
Either which way, not an easy desission if you have time to make it, decide once the emotions and a clear head and heart prevale. Good luck mate

Just out of interest, what caused the belt snap?

Bloody hell Alexis. Totally gutted for you.

Whatever you decide, let me know if want a hand taking bits off for repair or to flig. Happy to help you do both with the spanners

Gees, belts can be such bad news

Gutted for you mate It'd be a real shame to break it, it's such a great car. Even with a more basic engine setup installed, it'll be quicker round a track than all but a few coops out there... Give it some time and thought.

You seen this begbie?

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=251794440766

Be aware that this is a Kappa 16vt engine with lots missing so not a direct replacement for the Coupe 16vt with out some fettling.

My heart sank reading this Alexis

Take the time to clear your head, if you can tuck the car away whilst you decide.

Heart breaking news to hear for any owner. Just to confirm what model is your Coupe?

Reason I ask, along with collecting coupes over the years i've also collected engines, although to date never required, I may be able to help.

What damage exactly has this caused? I can't see anything in the above text. Surely you need a ball park figure for a repair in your head before you can even begin to ask if it's worth the spend...

At a guess:

- 16 bent valves (expensive ones too for a fully forged Guy Croft Engine)
- Damaged valve inserts x 16 (from bentness): requires recut or new inserts (copper beryllium ones on exhaust?)
- Damaged piston tops (new pistons would be £1k plus)
- Shock to the crank so maybe new big ends & main bearings
- Damage to head meaning it might just be scrap (after all the headwork = )
- Upper head damage, cams could be ok, valve guides could be ok, springs, collets, reshim?

All on top of removal, refitting, plus a new cambelt kit and headgasket set/seals. And maybe some mapping to check the new set up is the same as before.

This doesn't strike me as likely to have lunched the engine as above, Nobby. Mine let go at the redline and, although I needed 20 new valves (needing a new head because it was cheaper that way), everything else was good to go afterwards.

That said, I'm not sure how the 16v engine deals with this type of thing.

16s lunch the engine, top and bottom. The bottom damage is not immediately obvious, but bites you in the backside at some future inconvenient moment.

As you may have noticed I've been a bit absent of late on here, because, well, I honestly didn't know what I was going to do, but thank you to everyone that shown support in some way or another.

They say bad luck comes in 3's, well in my case it's been 5. First of, cambelt losing its teeth, then had a low speed bump in the Clio which ended up costing £140, then AutoGlass filled in a chip, which caused the screen to crack and cause a circular crack taking up 2/3rds of the screen, Halfords autocentre dicked me about by sending me wrong tyres, then to top it off, the garage got broken into and my Halfords toolkit and Clark trolley jack got stolen.

In more positive news the Clio is going and we've just taken delivery of a Nissan Juke Nismo RS as of yesterday, so a new car with lots of toys and 215bhp

Today, I spent the day up at Torque Automotive changing the cambelt to do a compression test and see what the damage is. Well, results are:

Cylinder 1 - 10 bar
Cylinder 2 - 10 bar
Cylinder 3 - 10 bar
Cylinder 4 - 5 bar

Bugger, at least it's damage limitation in some respect. The head wasn't taken off, need to speak to Mr Croft first to see what to do next, but at least I know the bill won't be that bad.

I had a look through the data logs and yep, the belt went whilst at idle, so it could have been a lot worse. As for the state of the belt, well, there are 2 sections of the belt where it is missing a whole bunch of teeth and the rest of the teeth on the belt are all split along the main edge, that's every single one! Mr Croft is going to send the belt to Gates for analysis as the belt was only on the car for 20 months or so.

Good to hear it's not as bad as you probably thought but on the flip bright side maybe a few little mods as it goes back together again

Hope to see it back on the road soon begbie

Are Gates belts rated for a 400+ hp coupe then Alexis?

Please correct me but surely Gates wont even entertain any responsabilty of bad belt manafacturing.

Glad all is not as bad as thought before. I hope to see it again someday.

Hi Beggars, i hope you and Becky are well? Can i just ask, have you got any cam-belt protection in place at all such as JBT's or Flea's devices?

Best thing to do is wait a few weeks then decide.

Most of us have considered beating the cars with a stick at some point.
Fiat are doing cracking deals on new cylinder heads at the moment for the 16vt so might be worth considering.

In terms of Bhp rating for belts,I can't see why that would cause an issue unless your running ridiculously high compression.

So fiat still sell the 16vt heads ??

They were available last year yes.

So, bringing this back up and it seems lady luck (to a certain degree) has been nice to me after a couple of crap months.

Head was taken off last weekend and dropped off with GC. In under an hour GC had already most of the head stripped down, grinding and doing some leak testing which seems to provide some comfort, but the email confirmation from himself yesterday evening was just what I wanted to hear:

That's excellent news Alexis.

Jammy bar steward!

Nice one, pleased for you!

You did bloody well there, Alexis - thirteen bent valves when mine went!

You're telling me, I didn't fancy spending £80+ for 1 exhaust valves, let alone 8 of them

That's excellent news Alexis

So your name is going back on the Spa list then

Fab news! Happy for you.

Just read this, excellent news.

I think your coupe dosen't want to go back to coupe hospital.

Glad it went this way

Great News, that must have put a smile on your face

Excellent news Alexis!

Great news! So I will see you in Spa to offer you our beer for the famous hose clip?

Great to hear Begbie

I highly doubt Spa will be on the cards, even though the valves have been saved, it's still a reasonable size chunk of money of money going out to get this done.

I think thats the time to convert the engine to propper 1" belt...

who still believe, that 3/4" for 16V 4cyl. engine is enough is probably crazy... It was the most stupid thing what italian engineers did (the should probably do it to have less reliable engine than rest of the world )

it cost me 3 engine rebuilds (16V highly modified NA)... unless I converted my engines (one in tipo and one in coupe) to 1" belt and from that moment I don´t have any problems.
One damage occured at high rpm, one at tickover and one around 3000 during normal ride. In all cases belt were max 2 years old and clean..)

If you look to another 4cyl engines around 2liter with simmilar valve train design what you see? at least 1" belt... later with Twin spark and derived engines (like 20V) engineers have found it and used 1" belt...

here is small brochure about timing belts:
http://aam-europe.contitech.de/pages/downloads/docs/Riemen_Komponenten_en.pdf

http://aam-europe.contitech.de/pages/downloads/docs/Produkte-Riemenwechsel-ZR_en.pdf

http://aam-europe.contitech.de/pages/antriebsriemen/fehlerbilder_zahnriemen_en.html

Well if this is to be believed then you are doing your part to maintain the 16VT for future generations.

https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/fiat_coupe_16v_turbo

Quite the drop off from 550ish in 2007 to less than 200 now. Less than 10% of the number of 20VT's still around. Surely they will appreciate at some point in the future......

Damnit, even fewer NAs than turbos now: 175 total vs 185. But a couple more on the road.

Techincally, mine is still a 16v N/A on the log book though

As I didn't add to it a couple of days ago, I'll be going up to fit the head tomorrow / Saturday, so lots of fingers crossed that no other issues decide to crop up!

it will be fine as i'll be doing most of the work

Making tea and sorting my foglight out

I'm just on the phone to him now about what to bring.

you only need to bring bread , bacon and tomato sauce

Hello, good to hear you have some luck with the cambelt problem! Hopefully your coupe is ready soon and no further issue!

I have a 25mm cambelt kit. And could use 22 to 25mm belt with the correct campullies installed. This kit works really well! Its around 200 pound for the belt and crankpully so not so expensive for a peace off mind and a small investment compared to the rest of engine tuning. This is where i bought it from: http://projoe.nl/product/22mm-camshaft-timing-belt-kit/

He is like GC from holland and developed this kit himself! To this day never seen this cambelt set up fail. Seen to many broken cambelts even on mildly tuned or standard engines so this was one of the first things i have done to the Coupe. But still paranoia makes me replace the belt every 2 years and the bearings every 4 years.

Hope it goes back together ok Begbie.

Ooh just seen these on that dutch chaps website. Love the carbon wheel covers!
http://projoe.nl/product/carbon-wheel-covers-brake-coolers/

Only just come across this thread - good luck Alexis, sorry to hear about your woes.

Well, how difficult is it to fit a water pump? Very if you get a none OE one. One from Eurocarparts (first line) fitted fine to the engine, but as soon as you put the pipe on that goes behind the engine, it doesn't fit, so another was bought from Alt Auto's (SKF), again, same issue was had. A quick call to Joe @ FCSS and once he'd finished laughing, he said all aftermarket water pumps cause issues, so it's a case of having to grind the bracket on the back of the engine block and drilling out the water pump bolts. This was all done, cambelt timed up with the cams, turn the engine over to get some oil into the head, then it's time to start the car and she lives, albeit with a small fuel leak, but that will be sorted next time I'm up there.

Big thanks to Marco @ Torque Automotive for all of his help, patience and the occasional sexual innuendo.

Well done Alexis and Marco, it's great to know she lives again

Woop woop
Glad to hear

The coupe lives and is now back home with me without any incident especially after being stuck in M25 traffic over an hour.

Had an interesting tussle with a Zafria VXR, well wasn't much of a tussle

Good news
Great to have it back on the road, we 16vt guys are becoming a rare breed..
So if i finally can get my finger out....

Well done begbie

Well done. So can you get a water pump that fits properly?

Yes you can with a bit of modification.


That's good news alexis , time to book a track day mate ?

As Nismo says, the pattern parts can fit, but with it's headaches (especially when trying to get the rear belt cover on) but for hassle free it has to be OE, but trying to find one might be slightly more troublesome.

No track day as of yet though.

Good stuff Alexis, glad its back on the road.

Good to hear you're back up and sprinting

Nice one mate. Top marks for keeping the beast going!

How is it running? Also keen to hear if you went with a 1" belt conversion? I am considering it but don't want to lose my balance shafts....