206 1.4 8V cambelt question

[ian_uk1975]

The water pump bearings on my girlfriend's 206 have started to make their presence known, so I want to swap the pump out before it seizes and throws the cambelt off. Frustrating, as the car was sold with a new cambelt and tensioner as part of the deal (only 7k miles ago), but the seller didn't bother to change the water pump while he was at it, so now I need to do the whole job again myself in order to change the water pump! Anyway, I've read a 'how to' guide on changing the cambelt on the TU engine and one of the steps is to lock the cam sprocket and the flywheel to stop them rotating. However, that seems like overkill to me, so are there timing marks on the cam sprocket and crank pulley to indicate TDC? Locking the cam is an unecessary step IMO as long as you're careful to double-check that the timing marks stay aligned when the new belt goes on.

Thanks.

[ian_uk1975]

megamaniac said:

Why struggle when it's so eay to lock it off? the cam only takes an m10 bolt pushed through the sprocket,the crank's a bit more fiddly but thats only an m5 bolt pushed in a hole too.
The problem comes when you are trying to tension the belt and the crank and cam move.

I've since read elsewhere that there are no timing marks on either the cam sprocket or the crank sprocket/pulley, so it looks like locking them is the only way to make sure they're in the correct position. Didn't realise they could be locked with just a couple of bolts (as opposed to an expensive pin set). Any idea how long the M5 bolt has to be to reach through the bellhousing and through the hole in the flywheel?

[ian_uk1975]

oakdale said:

I've done dozens of these, and have never needed to lock the crank/cam.
Just paint mark the pulleys and put paint marks on the engine that line up with them, then make sure they line up when the belt is fitted.

Yea, it did occur to me after posting my last reply that I could paint mark the pulleys against the block (if that hasn't already been done by somebody else over the years!)