Cut in timing belt

[jonnya]

Hello, I have an 2003 406s 1.9 90bhp 160 000K. I have been thinking about my timing belt and when to replace it..I inspected it and saw it had a slight cut. I wondered if this was urgent and I should replace as soon as possible or run the car until it is a convenient time to replace it...like after Chrismas.

The cut is 4mm across the top and about 2mm deep

I have a picture of the cut. I looking on this forum how to post a picture.

Thanks, Jon.

[jonnya]

Correction..the belt I am referring to is the belt on the right hand side of the engine...exposed and not covered. Is tht the timing belt?

[Hell Razor5543]

That is probably the auxiliary belt (for things such as the air/con compressor and power steering pump, I think). When you see that a belt is damaged you should replace it ASAP. If that belt were to fail it is possible that it could flail around and damage the timing belt. If that were then to fail (while the engine was at high revs) it will cause damage to the engine.

[spider]

If you upload the picture to say Imgur (no need to register usually) or Photobucket (registration needed I think) you can then post it here via the IMG tags.

[Oldpug]

If you can see it without removing any covers,it's the auxiliary belt. This belt and its tensioner has to be removed when replacing the cambelt.
So I think it's time to do the whole job in one go.When you do it get a full cambelt kit,pulleys,tensioner and water pump.
I`ve had an auxilary belt fail,the debris wrapped around the crank pulley,bits of the shredded belt got into the timing cover and caused the cambelt to fail. £1500 job!!

[CitroJim]

Yes, it is URGENT. If that belt breaks there is a good chance it'll end up snagging the cambelt and causing potentially destructive damage to the head.. So as oldpug says, do both jobs now and also carefully check the health of the auxiliary belt tensioner. That one failing could be the root cause of the damage...

[Harlequin]

I had to scrap a Renault espace 2002 when the aux belt failed and took out the cambelt - engine was very wrecked

[ekjdm14]

Definitely. I would echo everything Jim, Simon et al have said. You *could* likely "get away" with just replacing the aux belt & possibly the tensioner if cash/time are tight coming up to Christmas but if you don't know when the cam belt was last done (if ever!) then it'd be safer to replace the whole lot as soon as humanly possible. I believe the 1.9 engine does do major damage to itself if the timing belt slips/breaks so it is important to know everything is healthy in that area.

[CitroJim]

I believe the 1.9 engine does do major damage to itself if the timing belt slips/breaks so it is important to know everything is healthy in that area.

Yes, precisely why I could not rest easily until I'd done Gabriel's.

Basically, if the cambelt goes then the valves get pushed by the pistons into the cam and that in turn snaps the cam into a number of pieces and more often than not one or two cam bearing caps also break.

The cam can be replaced but the bearing caps can't as they are unique to that head... The bearings are line bored at the time of head manufacture and it will be found in practice that no other hearing caps from another head quite fit...

'Foreign' bearing caps can be made to approximately fit by various methods but it's never 100% good again...

So, essentially, although no valves usually get bent or damaged, the head is effectively a write-off.

The 2.1TD and 8V HDi engines fare a little better. A broken cambelt will generally not damage head or valves but will break rockers (cam followers); these can be replaced fairly easily and without removing the head...

A broken belt on 16v engines will bend valves...

Whenever you swap a cambelt always change the waterpump at the same time. If you don't likely in a matter of weeks you'll be doing the job again because the water pump has sprung a leak...

The 1.9TD is not the easiest belt to do but still much easier than resolving the damage after a breakage...