1.9 SDi (ASY) timing belt change guide

[ElSquiddo]

**update 05.08.2014**

Changed bit relating to timing marks for crank.

 

**update 12.07.2014**

Updated guide finished.

 

Foreword

This is Squiddos new guide to changing a timing belt & water pump for a Skoda Fabia 1.9 SDI (ASY), I would imagine this guide would work for any vehicle fitted with the vw 1.9 SDI (ASY) engine. This particular car has AC fitted, there is a difference in the aux drive belt, how to slacken and remove on a non AC car, the PDF should show you that, everything else remains the same.

As with all mechanics, take your time, go slow, and if in doubt about something, stop and have a think before taking any further action.

I assembled the guide based on information in the "Engine ASY" workshop manual (you can find from this forum by searching), and this guide for a TDi A3 http://www.tdiclub.c.../A3-TimingBelt/  is similar in areas, and with its great amount of pictures gave me confidence to try this job in the first place.

 

At the end of this document I’ll explain the changes, and the reason behind them, should you, dear reader be interested in knowing.

I recommend reading this in conjunction with Pages 23 to 29 of the ASY engine PDF.

  Special tools used.

Camshaft locking tool (to the right), is a clone of Laser tools 3327

Id not recommend the one I have as its of poor quality, I would consider an official laser 3327, however if you want to save a bit of money and don’t mind grinding the tool yourself, here is the link for mine. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321424389561?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

The Cambelt tensioner tool (box on the left), proved to be a bit hard to find, I ended up being lucky with my local motorfactors, make sure you can source one before the planned day of the job.

I used an 7mm drill bit to lock the diesel pump, the way I originally conducted the work placed a high strain on the drill bit, however as this guide has been rewritten with the correct mythology, I see no issue using a drill bit.

You will also need a torque wrench, and at least an 18mm socket for said torque wrench.

A 16mm spanner is also required for removing the aux drive belt.

 

Please note, after the belt change you should run the advanced dynamic timing check, this is achieved by using VAG-COM or VCDS/VCDS lite. If you do not have access to these items, I’m sure a local vw/skoda specialist can do this for you, as it’s really simple.

 

On with the job.

You can start with a cool or a hot engine, as by the time we get to the water pump bits, the engine will have cooled down sufficiently, just watch your hands/arms in the initial stages.

Jack the car on the drivers side, if you have an axel stand I highly recommend using one for this. I jacked here, and fitted the axel stand here.

Now remove drivers side front wheel, and wheel arch liner.

 

You will need to remove the plastic under tray too, I hadn’t at this point, then realised would have to later.

Right so were setup to begin the main task.

You’ll see in some of the later pictures I have a couple of extra pipes by the area were working on, this is because of a heat exchanger I’ve fitted on the fuel line on the fuel line, thankfully they didn’t get in the way, I imagine the stock pipes won’t either.

 

First thing I did was to remove the vacuum pump, its held by 3 bolts.

 

Then remove aux drive belt, get that out of the way,

Removing now also gives you less drag as now you’ve got to rotate the crank to get everything lined up to the timing marks.

 

Now we need to rotate the crankshaft to get the camshaft and diesel pump lined up with their locking holes.

I rotated the crank using the 4 little allen bolts which hold the crank pully for the aux drive belt, these bolds need to be undone at some point, you can of course use the large socket on the main crank nut, its torqued to over 120nm so I figured there’s no way I would generate the amount of torque required to loosen it simply by turning the engine over.

 

This certainly would have been easier if there was a simple way to remove the cylinder compression, happy to have suggestions here on how to do that!

 

The guide recommends finding the TDC mark on the flywheel, via the inspection hole in the bell-housing.  DO NOT USE THIS!

 

 

This is an extract of the pdf guide, on how to align TDC on the flywheel << DO NOT USE.

 

DO NOT TRY AND FOLLOW THE PDF, it is almost impossible to correctly time your engine using this method, I tried 3 times still couldn't get it right, you can get 'close enough' but not dead right, meaning the car will run, but sounds like a 70's tractor.

 

 

Never assume that simply because the engine is running that the timing is set correctly, the ASY engine is really tolerant, the cam to crank timing can be near 10 degrees out without major engine fault.

 

I think it’s actually unnecessary to try and find TDC at this stage, instead what we need to find, is the locking point for the camshaft & diesel pump, if we find those TDC will be very near, if not entirely on, we will be adjusting that later.

 

The guide recommends removing the rocker cover to make sure the camshaft in the right place

 

Note the locking tool used in the guide, and the Laser tool are different, the laser tool is much easier to use as it bolts into two of the vacuum pump bolts, it is unnecessary to remove the rocket cover, as shown in the picture below.

 

Go ahead and lock the camshaft.

 

Next lock the diesel pump like so, if everything is correct, the diesel pump locking pin should be easy to wiggle in, try locating with a 6mm bit first.

 

The drill bit will actually go in a bit further than shown in the picture with a bit of wiggling.

 

If you find that the diesel locking hole is no where near shown in the picture, try unlocking the camshaft, and rotating the engine (by the crank) until the diesel pump looks to be in the right position, you should be able to lock the camshaft again, and the diesel pump.

It’s imperative that both the camshaft and diesel pump are locked before we remove the timing belt.

 

Loosen the 3 diesel pump bolts so the sprocket is free to rotate a little, the drill bit will keep the diesel pump locked.

Loosen the centre bolt on the camshaft, brace the sprocket with either a specialist tool, or I used an adjustable spanner around one of the spokes, it should be a fairly easy bolt to undo.

 

Now we need to make the sprocket loosen off the tapered shaft, you can use an official VAG puller tool, or a generic puller tool, or the easy way, which requires no tools just a hammer.

 

I used the hammer approach, as I couldn’t get the 2/3 leg puller to grip the sprocket well enough, the hammer approach is a lot more gentile and civilized than it sounds, finger tighten the center bolt, then undo it a turn, and hit the bolt with a hammer towards the camshaft, as if you were striking a nail.

Don’t hit to hard, just a firm tap, then sprocket will simply pop loose, it sounds crazy but it really works.

Never hit the sprocket, never pry the sprocket, I haven’t done so, but have read forum posts from people who have cracked the sprocket through hitting it.

Leave the sprocket free to rotate on the end of the tapered shaft, but keep the bolt done up enough to prevent too much free play.

 

 

The disassembly

Remove the aux drive belt crank pully, this can be accessed through the wheel arch, undo the 4 bolts, do not touch the middle bolt.

 

 

These should undo very easily, Once the crank pully is off, double check all your timing marks are still lined up, although it’s highly unlikely they moved.

Whilst your there remove the black metal timing belt guards, there are 4 bolts, not tight, then the two black metal plates should come off really easily.

 

Now lets remove the engine mounting, to support the engine, place a jack under the oil sump as close to the drivers side as possible, if you want use something to soften the impact, I didn’t though as the car was on a hill, and I wanted the jack to have maximum purchase, jack very gently, you don’t want to risk crushing the oil sump.

 

 

Once the jack is holding some of the engine weight, we can undo the engine mount by taking the 3 bit silver bolts from the top, then the 4 smaller bolts which hold the engine mount to the frame. (see pic below)

make sure the jack is stable, as later on we will need to start and run the engine with it held in this position

 

 

Note the extra pipes, stock setup won’t have these.

Take this opportunity to remove the aluminium engine mount part from the engine, there are very long 3 bolts, which bolt into the engine, two are accessible on the side from under the bonnet, the last bottom one is only really accessable from the wheel arch, you can be cheeky and lower the engine to access the bottom bolt with a socket set, these bolts are quite tight being torqued to 45nm, I had a bit of difficulty shifting them.

 

Cheeky bottom bolt, its tight, so I lowered the engine to get at it with a socket.

 

Once the engine side of the engine mount is out the way, we need to slacken the timing belt tensioner by undoing the centre nut, remove the top idler, then wiggle the belt off, this can be a challenge, I think I managed a combination of camshaft and tensioner off together, or go the camshaft section near the edge and managed to slip the tensioner off which loosened the belt enough to wiggle off the camshaft sprocket.

Once the belt is off, remove the lower idler, the centre nut is quite tight.

 

Right belt off you're half way there

 

Now time to undo the 3 bolts holding the water pump, be warned this will drain about 3-4 litres of coolant, potentially very hot coolant. The water pump should easily pop out.

 

The reassembly

Fit the new water pump, sadly I didn’t take pictures of this part, but it should be quite obvious how the water pump is removed and refitted.

 

Make sure you replace the rubber o ring into the pump before fitting, we don’t want any leaks. Torque the 3 bolts to 15nm

Replace the lower belt idler 40nm then a further 90 degrees, but don’t do the top one just yet.

Now replace the belt tensioner as it shown below, you may need to move it up and down the shaft a bit when trying to refit the belt.

 

Now it’s time to refit the belt, take great care not to move the crank shaft if you haven’t got it locked. I found it easier to fit diesel pump first, then the crank, then finally the camshaft and tensioner at the same time, it’s a bit of wiggling, but should stop things from moving around.

 

Finally fit the top idler, then is should end up looking like this.

 

New belt, tensioner, and idlers!

 

 

Correcting the timing

Now the new belt is on, we can correct any mistakes in the timing, the camshaft is still locked, the diesel pump is still locked, as I said before just because the engine was running doesn’t mean it was timed correctly.

 

To time correctly you'll need to refit the metal timing belt covers, and the auxiliary crank pulley as the timing marks to use are on these two items, DO NOT try and use the timing mark on the flywheel.

 

Refit the timing belt guards, the bottom circular bit goes on first, then the top bit, the top and bottom bit share two bolts, the lower of the top, and upper of the bottom are shared.

you can just about see the timing mark in this picture.

 

Although its really hard to see in this picture, i've circled the two timing marks, there is one little notch on the crank pulley, and one on the metal timing belt guard.

 

 

 

 

Now were all timed up correctly

 

Now tension up the cam belt as described here.

 

Check the TDC mark sure it hasn’t moved.

 

If everything is good, tighten up the centre cam bolt to 45nm, making sure you brace the sprocket.

Tighten the 3 diesel pump bolts.

 

Now we need to remove all the locking pins/tools, and rotate the engine by hand (same as we did initially) so make sure no valves and pistons try and break any laws of physics by occupying the same space at the same time.

Never rotate the engine by the camshaft bolt, use the crank bolt, it’s torqued to over 120nm, the camshaft bolt is only 45nm.

Ok assuming we’ve done all that, and your satisfied nothing is colliding, refit the vacuum pump onto the camshaft.

Start the engine, be careful as its still on the jack! hopefully it should spring to life in the usual quick time, no need to run for more than a second or so, assuming all is well check the cambelt tensioning one final time, as it will probably have moved. Adjust to correct setting and torque down the centre nut to 20nm, although I reckon I did slightly more than that.

 

Next you’ll want to refit the engine mount(s), first the engine side, torque those bolts to 45nm, then fit the car side, again 45nm,

 

 

Engine side, done, car side done, just need the 3 top bolts to join them together.

The 3 big silver top bolts are 20nm then a further 90 degrees, I went with ‘very tight’ as I didn’t have a 13mm or a 16mm socket to fit on the torque wrench.

 

you should already have the metal timing belt covers on, and the crank pulley.

Now fit the new auxiliary drive belt, wheel arch liner, under tray, and drivers side wheel.

Take the car off the axel stand, refill with coolant, and try the engine one more time, it should spring to life, it will take a while to bleed out all the air bubbles, so be prepared to keep topping up the coolant, I couldn’t find any bleed nipples on the cooling system, but due to its constant flow via the reservoir design, it seems to bleed air bubbles out quite effectively.

 

 

The final step, is to set the dynamic advanced timing using TDi tool part of VAG-COM/VCDS, which is not necessary for your car to run, but it should be done.

If you have a VAG-COM or VCDS/VCDS-Lite then it’s actually really easy to do, there is a most excellent guide here http://www.ross-tech.com/vag-scope/TDIGraph.html

The VCDS lite I have, doesn’t list the ASY engine, but from what google says the AEY engine is the same engine but fitted to vw cars, so use that option on VCDS.

When adjusting, loosen the 3 bolts, and turn the diesel pump with the centre bolt, use really really small movements, seriously tiny ones, you may have to do a couple of runs before getting it right, you only need to make sure the timing is within tolerances, I was lucky with my second attempt.

This is what the graph should look like if everything is cool

 

 

So what changed, and why?

I have learnt a lot about the ASY engine through chaining the timing belt, and then subsequently troubleshooting the issues caused by taking ‘short cuts’.

The first thing I’ve learnt is the ASY engine is amazingly tolerant of the cam to crank timing being out, before I corrected the engine timing, I think it was over a tooth out of time, yet the engine still ran and pulled, albeit with some lumpiness.

The second thing I’ve learnt is that even proper ‘professional’ garages will take short cuts, and leave your engine timing out.

 

The original version documented my first timing belt change, I had decided to take some short cuts, in the form of not loosening the camshaft sprocket, nor loosening the 3 little bolts on the diesel pump sprocket.  The net result was, that as a result of tensioning the timing belt, and there being no free movements in the cam or diesel sprockets the only thing which could (and did) rotate was the crank shaft, this caused the cam and crank timing to slip out by a few degrees, at first I didn’t notice, as I stated in the original guide I could not find TDC on the crank, and the engine ran post assembly.

 

Turns out there was a reason I couldn’t find TDC on the crank, the timing was already a few degrees out before I even took the old belt off!

The only thing I can conclude is the garage who replaced the belt previously did it way I original advised, the ‘lazy way’ which resulted in the engine being a few degrees out, not enough to be noticed, as I said the ASY is stupid tolerant of this, but out of time enough so that when I attempted the lazy way, the few degrees of slip that added were enough to be noticeable.

 

The issues experienced were, general sluggishness, and engine vibration at acceleration or constant cursing speed, the engine also sounded fairly harsh like an old tractor, sometimes shook the whole car, it was quite obvious something was wrong.

Instead of start the whole process again, I kept the belt tensioned, locked the camshaft, loosened the camshaft sprocket (as described herein) then rotated the crank until I could clearly see TDC, then I re-tightened the camshaft sprocket.

 

As I've found out, even though this is a somewhat basic diesel engine, with the timing setup dead right, the engine will purr beautifully, sounding much nicer than I ever expected a VE diesel to sound.

 

I had already set the pump to crank timing correctly using VCDS lite, the only thing it could have been was the cam to crank timing as there are no electrical sensors on the ASY engine to inform of issues in this area.

 

Once reassembled the car is transformed, very rev happy, sounds much nicer through the rev range, definitely more Spritly (if such a term can be used to describe a 64hp NA diesel), and no more vibrations.

 

 

So that’s my guide and my story, any thoughts or feedback welcome.

[igbt]

Great writeup, thanks for posting. Will also be trying to replace the timing belt on my SDI in the next month or so. One way to be able to rotate the crank more easily would be to remove the glow plugs so you're not compressing air in the cylinders.

I'd read elsewhere that you might be able to use a pair of circlip pliers instead of the laser tensioning tool to tension the belt. Do you think this would work or is the access too limited?

Am also curious to know why it was so difficult to find TDC via the flywheel inspection hole- was it that access and visibility are difficult or something else?

[igbt]

Having just completed this timing belt change as well, I thought I'd post a few further thoughts/photographs to supplement Squiddo's excellent guide.  This turned out to be a fairly time consuming job but managed it in a weekend with some time to spare, having said that, it is fairly straight forward with no major hurdles encountered so I'd encourage anyone with a moderate level of experience and confidence to have a go.  Rather than following the original post with my own guide, I'm just posting some further suggestions/photographs that may help other along.

 

Glow plugs:  You can remove the glow plugs to make rotating the engine a lot easier.  You'll need a 10mm 1/4 inch deep reach socket or a special glow plug removal tool to get them out as they're fairly tight up against the head.  Having said this, it is difficult to rotate the crank with the plugs in place but nowhere near as bad as I thought it'd be having tried it.  it is actually quite useful to have the plugs in when you come to re-install the belt as it helps stop the crank from rotating accidently so there is less change of accidently mucking up the timing.

 

Removing the cam sprocket:  Having fashioned up a counter hold using a piece of metal and to bolts, it was easy enough to under the sprocket centre bolt but proved to be another thing entirely to pull the sprocket.  I tried the hammer trick to start with but chickened out when the sprocket didn’t pop off after the first few attempts.  Instead, I reverted to using a small (75mm) three jaw puller.  It proved to be a bit of trial and error to get it to stay in place but with some perseverance you can get the three arm onto the lip on the centre of the pulley and push against the centre bolt (with the bolt undone at least a turn)

 

Finding TDC on the crank:  As noted in the original guide, it is difficult to find this mark but with a bit of perseverance, it is there.  I hadn’t managed to find a picture on line of what to look for- the are some available for the TDI version of the engine but the flywheel seems to be subtly different on the SDI and of course the sketch in the Skoda engine manual isn’t much help.  For a start, the teeth are more difficult to see but I found that the key is to put your head down near the battery and look in at an angle facing the engine and you’ll be able to see the teeth.  The mark for TDC is a small line on the flywheel, running perpendicular to the teeth.  If you can’t see it after having locked the cam in TDC, its easiest to have someone rotate the crank slowly near where TDC should be so that you can look for the mark while the flywheel is rotating.

 

Centre timing belt cover:  Having removed the engine mount, its time to remove the centre timing belt cover for which the mount attaches to.  The bottom bolt is tricky to access but can be got at and loosened using a spanner.  The top two bolts on the other hand were much more tricky as they are set into the cover so access is not possible with a spanner, but the clearance to the wheel arch is too small to fit in a socket.  The solution is to jack up the engine slightly on this side such that you can get a socket in to loosen the two bolts.  It may make you nervous jacking up the engine but as long as you don’t go further than needed to access the bolts, it should prove no problem.

 

Tensioner:  Included just for information, the tension on my old timing belt was so low that the tensioner had gone way beyond the wear indicator.  Admittedly I’d left it the full 80,000 mile service interval for the belt before changing, but worrying none the less.  After your installed the new tensioner and tensioned up the belt, down forget to turn the crank a couple of turns and check that the belt tension is still correct and that the timing of the crank, cam and fuel injection pump are still correct.

Old tensioner (VERY loose beyond acceptable wear indicator)

new tensioner (tensioned correctly)

 

Water Pump:  I include some photos as there were none in the original guide but there’s really nothing to it when changing the water pump just remove the old one, clean up the engine surface where the new one will go and install.

 

And there you go.  After reassembling, I cranked the engine and the car started straight away.  I don’t have the ross-tech tool to check the timing electronically but I don’t think there is any need as long as you have rotated the engine a few times and checked that all the timing is still correct.

 

Hopefully the above will be beneficial to the next person who attempts this, just as Squiddo’s guide was very helpful to me.  Would be interested to hear from anyone else who attempts this so please post your own stories, or any questions.

Edited 19 May, 2015 by igbt

[Dhcock]

Just used this guide to change the cambelt, water pump and auxillary belt on my 02 plate VW polo 1.9 SDI. Absolutely spot on. My one bit of advice for getting the belt on easily is to put on the diesel pump, then crank, then without the tensioner on its shaft put the belt on it and slide on the shaft at the same time as feeding it on the camshaft sprocket.

[poloSDI]

Is there any chance to renew pictures?