XANTIA HDI DEAD!

[XantiaJon]

My 90 BHP, HDI cam belt tensioner, disintegrated! I was driving at high speed (100 mph +) at the time! Now my engine is shot! Anybody know how much damage is likely to have occurred? The cam shaft pulley rotates with virtually no resistance! I've got 3 options, Scrap it, have the head taken off & hopefully have the damage fixed, or have a 2nd hand
engine fitted. Anybody used Tower engines in London?
My Xantia is W APRIL 2000, is it worth fixing!
Anybody want to buy it for parts LOL? It's just clocked over 71K, New spheres fitted a month ago

[Kowalski]

The HDI engine is nothing like the XUD in terms of what it does when the cambelt goes. The XUD will break the cam, bend valves or break the head / valve guides where as the HDI has some nice weak cam followers to break.

It'll fix, worst case it'll need a new head, even if it needs a new head thats only a couple of hundred pounds for the parts and labour.

[XantiaJon]

Thanks, anybody know a garage near Portsmouth who could carry out this work. Most places around here seem to know little or nothing about the HDI engine! Even the local Citroen dealer!

[wheeler]

deffo fix it,as already said,the rockers usually break before the valves bend.

[AndersDK]

Get a couple of quotes on the head job. Wont cost you anything but the time spent.
Then compare this to the pricetag of an OK similar reg & model Xantia.

Bet the head job is not that bad as you first feared.

[XantiaJon]

Having the followers etc looked at today! If it doesn't look like those, then i'm going to Take it on a trailer to a Citroen Specialist, probably CITROEN CAR CENTRE, IN Ash Vale. Has anybody used them? At least they are happy to take the head off with the engine in situ, everybody else wants to drop it out! Including the local Citroen dealer!

I drive about 120 miles a day at the moment i'm using my old 205 GRD!

[zzf00l]

www.motorcast.com

Try these people....I have used them a number of times with excellent results. You will be offered a choice of repairing your own head, purchasing a replacement head or purchasing a brand new head... (A brand new head from these people is actually cheaper than a refurb head from GSF) despatch too and from is also arranged by carrier service...

TOP SERVICE

They also can supply anything you need to complete the job.... headbolts, gaskets etc, (also cheaper than GSF)

[Stewart(oily)]

I have repaired a few of the older XUD engines after a cambelt failure often finding bent valves, snapped cams etc but from the evidence in this thread it looks like the HDI engines are built using "sacrificial" rocker arms, older Vauxhall diesels had these, there was an actual slot in the rocker, obviously designed as a weak point which would fail preventing damage to other components, got to be worth looking at IMHO
Stewart

[zzf00l]

Yep, if you are lucky it may just be the cam followers..... but at high speed you have to be very lucky. I have seen one break at 'tick over' and the only damage was to the cam followers! It's got to be worth changing the broken parts and trying it.

[XantiaJon]

New rocker arms fitted, new Cam Belt & Tensioner fitted! All done without removing the head! Running a treat sounds great! Just waiting for the bill! I really thought the car would be uneconomical to repair.
Now I just need the cover from the Cam Belt as my ones got a big hole in it where the tensioner came out! Anybody got one for sale?
Thanks to everybody who posted, especially Kowalski.