PART THREE: Our 2008 Panda 100HP was getting near to needing a timing belt renewal. Easy or tricky? With one proviso and no special tools, it’s very doable. Andrew Everett reports.
I’ve always wondered why some manufacturers make a timing belt change such a drama – I’m looking at you, VW Group. Their 1.4 petrol has two belts and a tensioning procedure that would baffle Einstein and to what end? Timing belts should be easy like they used to be – engines like the Ford Pinto and CVH, Vauxhall OHC and VW’s of old.
Luckily Fiat kept it nice and simple with the FIRE engine and in cars like the Uno and Tipo, a belt change could be done in not much more than hour. Our Panda has had a belt before at 51,000 miles so it wasn’t far off needing another one. I decided to take our 100HP over to Parkside Autos in Worksop – aBMW specialist who seem to be able to fix anything.
The good news is that in old-school style, the timing belt is a nice easy one. You don’t need locking tools although the £10 tensioner adjusting fork is pretty useful and hardly expensive. Long story short: if you’re handy at timing belts you’ll do one of these in a morning – although getting the engine mount bracket off is a right cow.
1 The first job is to remove the air filter assembly. Simple enough with just three 10mm bolts securing the filter box to the engine and there are two intakes to disconnect – one is a simple push fit, the other has a snap on clip – and I replaced this with a proper worm drive clip. 2 Now we must remove the plastic upper timing belt cover. This upper 13mm bolt is easy enough to get to and remove but the other one is down the front – a10mm bolt that is slightly trickier to get at. Even so, with a quick dose of penetrating fluid we had it out in no time. 3 Worth mentioning here is the small section of engine wiring loom that goes to a sensor, and it’s tucked in behind the belt cover. We thought discretion was the better part of valour, so we carefully pulled it back out of the way as seen here. 4 With that done, the upper belt cover unclips and can be lifted out of the way. Now we could see that there were no oil leaks from the camshaft oil seal – this isn’t a bad unit for oil leaks unlike the majority of German engines that seem to leak oil for fun. 5 With the cover off we can see a few things. The most alarming being a nick in the timing belt – you can just see it under that bit of tape on the wiring loom. There is also a grove worn in the belt – we suspect a slightly ham-fisted job was made of the last belt swap.6 Remove the driver’s side front wheel and you will see the front arch liner as well as this section that covers the lower part of the engine. It’s secured to the body
