i'm fuming - cam belt problem

[VRStu]

I wondered Lummox if you could ring Skoda Customer services on our behalf and speak to Maureen for me. Our name is Brooke. We don't know what else to do as yet.

Regards

Sue

I don't think that would be appropriate given his position I'm afraid.

It could be worth speaking to one of the two main motoring organisations.

[rum4mo]

I don't think that would be appropriate given his position I'm afraid.

It could be worth speaking to one of the two main motoring organisations.

Yes I'm afraid I totally agree on both counts, good luck!

[brookieme]

Hi there,

As said by Lummox and Ric, if a skoda franchised dealer has fitted a genuine part to your car and you have an invoice they have to give the 12 months skoda parts warranty.

Since they say this has failed I'd get it in writing from them on headed paper and then contact Skopda UK with a copy of the invoice and the letter asking why their main dealer won't honour their 12 months parts warranty.

The dealer telling you there is no warranty either doesn't know what they are talking about or is deliberately lying to you. I have had a part replaced under this warranty in the not too distant past due to a faulty part.

I'd almost say it sounds like they are getting very desperate to shift some cars.

Just reading through everything again after hols. They are saying the stud which failed wasn't under warranty. The cam belt kit is but they say it wasn't that that caused the problem it was the stud.

[KenONeill]

Just reading through everything again after hols. They are saying the stud which failed wasn't under warranty. The cam belt kit is but they say it wasn't that that caused the problem it was the stud.

It's super rare for studs to fail. If it was correctly torqued, and not re-used do often it ran out of fatique life (and that's frankly not going to happen with a stud in a cambelt system) I'd say Tom's probably right; something else siezed, and broke the stud with a shock loading.

[brookieme]

my thoughts on this...

did the belt break or did it just jump off the pulley??

has the new tensioner seized up or does it still turn??

it takes an aweful lot of force to shear a stud so i'm guessing maybe the tensioner seized up causing the stud to break due to the shock loading

hi there,

thanks for the info. can you tell me why the tensioner would seize up? im guessing that it would be something they had done when fitting the cam belt + kit.

We are waiting for a response from letters with full details sent to Skoda HQ and dealer HQ at the moment.

Any more info on this would be very useful. thanks regards Sue:thumbup:

[dave a]

Hi,

this is my take on the situation (as a time served qualified mechanic and garage owner). If I had fitted a belt to a customers engine and 3 months later they informed me of the problems you have had I would take the car back in straight away and investigate. If it was a broken bolt that held a tensioner/idler ( I have seen this before on various engines, mainly ford and pegout) then I would check wether the job had a new bolt fitted and if so, get the bolt sent back to the manufacturer for an investigation. I would also check other components such as the idler roller its self and any other components on the engine that are directly connected.

A belt is stronger than the tensiner bolt if you compare the direct breaking strengths in their respective positions and directions of the strain applied.

Heres a good example:

I fitted a new belt kit (inc new bolts) to a customers car last year. Customer booked the car back in after 4 months as it had 'stalled' whilst being driven. Upon inspection the idler pulley bolt had snapped. recovery truck driver blamed poor installation, customer blamed us as well. We stripped the engine to find that the oil was 60% petrol and the oil pump had failed. The cylinder head had been starved of oil and the cam lifters were jammed in the head, cams had stopped turning and belt siezed, idler pulley took the immediate force and the bolt sheared. Customer didnt agree, independent garage confirmed our findings.

I then found a reciept in the customers car that gave information to back up our findings saying the lambda sensor had failed as well as other components, engine was massively overfuelling causing bore wash and mixing of oil and petrol and that it should be fixed ASAP to avoid serious engine damage. Customer ignored this, killed his own engine and recieved a bill for 300 pounds to cover our investigation work.

Hope the above helps and shows that its not always as clear cut as it may seem.

[Tech1e]

Hi,

this is my take on the situation (as a time served qualified mechanic and garage owner). If I had fitted a belt to a customers engine and 3 months later they informed me of the problems you have had I would take the car back in straight away and investigate. If it was a broken bolt that held a tensioner/idler ( I have seen this before on various engines, mainly ford and pegout) then I would check wether the job had a new bolt fitted and if so, get the bolt sent back to the manufacturer for an investigation. I would also check other components such as the idler roller its self and any other components on the engine that are directly connected.

A belt is stronger than the tensiner bolt if you compare the direct breaking strengths in their respective positions and directions of the strain applied.

Heres a good example:

I fitted a new belt kit (inc new bolts) to a customers car last year. Customer booked the car back in after 4 months as it had 'stalled' whilst being driven. Upon inspection the idler pulley bolt had snapped. recovery truck driver blamed poor installation, customer blamed us as well. We stripped the engine to find that the oil was 60% petrol and the oil pump had failed. The cylinder head had been starved of oil and the cam lifters were jammed in the head, cams had stopped turning and belt siezed, idler pulley took the immediate force and the bolt sheared. Customer didnt agree, independent garage confirmed our findings.

I then found a reciept in the customers car that gave information to back up our findings saying the lambda sensor had failed as well as other components, engine was massively overfuelling causing bore wash and mixing of oil and petrol and that it should be fixed ASAP to avoid serious engine damage. Customer ignored this, killed his own engine and recieved a bill for 300 pounds to cover our investigation work.

Hope the above helps and shows that its not always as clear cut as it may seem.

I had a very similar thing on a 2.0 8V Frontera. I replaced the cambelt and tensioner. A few days later the car came back with the belt stripped. The A recover chap blamed me for not fitting the cambelt correctly and over tightening the camshaft pulley bolt which led it to snap. Of course I explained I didnt touch the camshaft pulley bolt and the fact the camshaft has seized in the carrier thus ripping the pulley off its keyway. The engine had seized as the oil was like friggin glue and had stuck the oil pressure relief valve open.

[brookieme]

Hi,

this is my take on the situation (as a time served qualified mechanic and garage owner). If I had fitted a belt to a customers engine and 3 months later they informed me of the problems you have had I would take the car back in straight away and investigate. If it was a broken bolt that held a tensioner/idler ( I have seen this before on various engines, mainly ford and pegout) then I would check wether the job had a new bolt fitted and if so, get the bolt sent back to the manufacturer for an investigation. I would also check other components such as the idler roller its self and any other components on the engine that are directly connected.

A belt is stronger than the tensiner bolt if you compare the direct breaking strengths in their respective positions and directions of the strain applied.

Heres a good example:

I fitted a new belt kit (inc new bolts) to a customers car last year. Customer booked the car back in after 4 months as it had 'stalled' whilst being driven. Upon inspection the idler pulley bolt had snapped. recovery truck driver blamed poor installation, customer blamed us as well. We stripped the engine to find that the oil was 60% petrol and the oil pump had failed. The cylinder head had been starved of oil and the cam lifters were jammed in the head, cams had stopped turning and belt siezed, idler pulley took the immediate force and the bolt sheared. Customer didnt agree, independent garage confirmed our findings.

I then found a reciept in the customers car that gave information to back up our findings saying the lambda sensor had failed as well as other components, engine was massively overfuelling causing bore wash and mixing of oil and petrol and that it should be fixed ASAP to avoid serious engine damage. Customer ignored this, killed his own engine and recieved a bill for 300 pounds to cover our investigation work.

Hope the above helps and shows that its not always as clear cut as it may seem.

thanks for that but it doesn't alter the fact that the car was taken back to the garage after the cam belt was fitted with problems and the dealer did a test drive and said there was nothing wrong and sent us on our way. If he had picked up the symptons as cam belt probs as others have said we wouldn't be in this situation we are in now.

[dave a]

What were the symptoms that you reported to them? (did read some of the post but may have missed it)

[vicount]

sorry to hear about your car,i had very similar problems with my dealer here in Ireland, had a new cambelt and new waterpump fitted, cambelt wasnt fitted correctly and destroyed my engine! fortunatley my dealer stood tall and took the blame, and the put a brand new engine in my car, a whole new engine. i did name and shame the dealers here on briskoda and im sure that helped sway their decision.

http://briskoda.net/fabia-i/pi55ed-off-main-dealer/111729/

[brookieme]

What were the symptoms that you reported to them? (did read some of the post but may have missed it)

Hi there,

the symptons car lurching forward occasionally, engine sounds different to normal (bearing in mind we are not michanically minded at all).

[brookieme]

What was the original invoice for? As well as the belt, did they fit the tensioner, pulleys and may be a water pump as well, or did you instruct them to change the belt only?

Just noticed your questions.

During the 80.000 miles service

they replaced cam belt and leaking water pump and some headlight dip beam. Total cost over £600.

[brookieme]

I had a very similar thing on a 2.0 8V Frontera. I replaced the cambelt and tensioner. A few days later the car came back with the belt stripped. The A recover chap blamed me for not fitting the cambelt correctly and over tightening the camshaft pulley bolt which led it to snap. Of course I explained I didnt touch the camshaft pulley bolt and the fact the camshaft has seized in the carrier thus ripping the pulley off its keyway. The engine had seized as the oil was like friggin glue and had stuck the oil pressure relief valve open.

On our fab's 80.000 service they fitted a cam belt, water pump and head light dip beam toal cost over £600.

[KenONeill]

Hiya bonny lass. From the way you've talked throughout this thread, I'm sure that, if there is an issue with how the car's been serviced, it's down to the servicing dealer, and not to owner neglect.

[dave a]

so the car was lurching forward and didnt sound right, how long after the cambelt swap did you notice this?

Personally I cant see a connection between an idler bolt snapping and the above symptoms.

People are always quick to blame the dealers (that isnt directed at anyone in this thread) but anything mechanical has a chance of failing, after 3 months I cant see the dealers being at fault. There will always be an element of component failures even on a standard road car even if everything was completed 100% correctly during fitting. Look at competition engines (not a direct comparison of course) but I have worked on engines that have been built by engineers such as mountune with 25K budgets for a simple n/a engine. Everything has been built perfectly well and by the best in the business but one I had in had less than 2k miles on it, never used hard on track but engine failed as it was being driven up the ramps onto the trailer! exact cause was never found but it wasnt cheap to fix!

Have they mentioned anything about stripping the engine to see if there are any other clues as to why a component has failed?

[brookieme]

Hiya bonny lass. From the way you've talked throughout this thread, I'm sure that, if there is an issue with how the car's been serviced, it's down to the servicing dealer, and not to owner neglect.

Thanks for that Ken:). We have been so honest and feel really let down by the dealer. We have trusted them and relied on them to know what is best for our skoda cars. Now we feel they are totally letting us down.

The car was very different when it came back after the cam belt was fitted. It was sluggish from start and then lurching forward later on. We put up with it for awhile as we thought they had just serviced it and fitted a cam belt surly nothing could be wrong. When things didn't get better we took it back and tried to explain that something was very wrong. They never picked up on the impending disaster that was to later happen. Our car is still with them we are still waiting for answers to letters to Skoda Head Office and dealer Head office. The car will be stripped down I suppose but we really feel that the major fault should have been picked up before it happened.

[moley]

How many miles after the cambelt change did the fault occur? and do you know what checks the garage carried out when you took it back and told them the car was not running correctly, did they just run the car or did they physically check the belt etc. It might be worth asking for a report on what checks were carried out and their findings when you took the car back to them.

[brookieme]

How many miles after the cambelt change did the fault occur? and do you know what checks the garage carried out when you took it back and told them the car was not running correctly, did they just run the car or did they physically check the belt etc. It might be worth asking for a report on what checks were carried out and their findings when you took the car back to them.

The car was a different drive straight away but we

put up with it for 2000 miles before taking it in, thinking it must be ok as they had done a full service changed the cam belt and water pump. They did a test drive and then looked at the turbo for some reason then sent us on our way saying everything was ok.

[Fabby]

brookieme

Where are you based? I know a very good independent diesel engine specialist in Rugeley (Staffordshire). If you need his details, send me a pm.

Good luck

Rob

[brookieme]

brookieme

Where are you based? I know a very good independent diesel engine specialist in Rugeley (Staffordshire). If you need his details, send me a pm.

Good luck

Rob

Hi Rob, thanks for that but it looks like we are all sorted now. We found an independent diesel engine specialist and I took him along to see the fabia. He immediately said that the damage on the stud etc was the result of over tightening. That it was a classic case of this from the things he looked at. We have told the dealers and after a few days they have agreed to put in another engine etc. One that has done 15,000 miles. It is being done and we should have the car back this week sometime. Hopefully done properly.

So thanks to all who have sent posts. I will let you know how the car is later.Regards Sue:):):):):)

[KenONeill]

I thought as much (long range diagnosis, literally), and note has been taken!

May I direct your attention to the review centre (top right)?

[expostmanpat]

glad its sorted, hope it didn't put a damper on your hols

[Golf-Fiend]

... and after a few days they have agreed to put in another engine etc. One that has done 15,000 miles. It is being done and we should have the car back this week sometime. Hopefully done properly.

So thanks to all who have sent posts. I will let you know how the car is later.Regards Sue:):):):):)

Do make sure that the garage will give you some kind of limited warranty/guaranty on the replacement engine. Obviously they can't offer a full guaranty on a used engine but you really don't wan't to be left in a position where there is the possibility of the engine being duff. I have had this experience all too often with engines from breakers on my old Golf GTi's. So called "low mileage" engines had probably done 130+k miles and was useless requiring yet another swap etc.

I'm not sure how you could go about ensuring this replacement engine will be a good value? You really can't tell until it is in and running and you drive it. Maybe get them to agree to covering 3 months on mechanical failure and 6 months on the labour incase anything needs doing to it once installed?

This is just my (bad) experience of using engines from breakers. I'm sure your outcome will be fine but it just pays to be a little wary.

HTH

Nick....

[brookieme]

Do make sure that the garage will give you some kind of limited warranty/guaranty on the replacement engine. Obviously they can't offer a full guaranty on a used engine but you really don't wan't to be left in a position where there is the possibility of the engine being duff. I have had this experience all too often with engines from breakers on my old Golf GTi's. So called "low mileage" engines had probably done 130+k miles and was useless requiring yet another swap etc.

I'm not sure how you could go about ensuring this replacement engine will be a good value? You really can't tell until it is in and running and you drive it. Maybe get them to agree to covering 3 months on mechanical failure and 6 months on the labour incase anything needs doing to it once installed?

This is just my (bad) experience of using engines from breakers. I'm sure your outcome will be fine but it just pays to be a little wary.

HTH

Nick....

Thanks for that Nick. Will be guided by your note and ask for warranty etc on the engine and new cam belt etc. Do hope we wont have more trouble must have been awful for you.

Thanks Sue:thumbup:

[brookieme]

glad its sorted, hope it didn't put a damper on your hols

We had a great holiday thanks for asking..........The octavia we had to buy was a great towing car and lovely to drive too. We are going to have to sell it now though. Don't need three skoda's. We will make sure the fabia is running well before we do though.

Regards Sue:thumbup: