cambelt gone 147 tspark

[dre]

hi to all,my little bro picked up a 147 tspark £5500 8 weeks ago from a dealer,36000 on the clock, sevice history,3 months warranty upto £300 or 3000 mile. dealer done the standard thing service/mot/tax.bro not knowing alot about alfa's/cambelts didnt ask about the cambelt change,1200 mile later (bang) its gone ,dealer now asking for £900 to fix it as its more than the warrantys set at,all 16 valves+rods need replacing.the dealer serviced the car befor bro picked it up so who's at fault here !!! bro for not asking or dealer for not doing.looking around most poeple say 36000 change but what does alfa say to do it at

Edited by dre on Friday 20th June 23:37

[jacobyte]

Alfa says 36K. It was originally 72K, but they changed it to 36K a couple of years ago as everyone's kept snapping mid 40's (like mine).

(or is it 48k now...? beer is getting the better of me at this time of a Friday night)

[Alfahorn]

The interval is 36k now, the OP's original post indicates the dealer was neither a main agent or specialist and knew fk all about Alfa!!!!!

[bint]

£900 doesn't sound like too bad a price from a dealer for all that work IMHO - having had top end rebuild and cambelt replaced on the 156 SW last year for about that price. We sourced 2nd hand parts (cams etc) for the rebuild too.

[dre]

thanks for the info, but is there a good chance of bottom block damage as well and what would it be as the dealer has'nt said a thing about the bottom half

[Mr2Mike]

dre said:

thanks for the info, but is there a good chance of bottom block damage as well and what would it be as the dealer has'nt said a thing about the bottom half

You mention that the rods need replacing, presumably you mean con-rods? If so then there definitely has been bottom end damage.

[wadgebeast]

Damage is usually only to the head - valve stems tend to get a bit bent.

[Wombat Rick]

wadgebeast said:

Damage is usually only to the head - valve stems tend to get a bit bent.

Yes, but in so many cases you hear about bottom end damage a few thousand miles later unfortunately.

[wrinx]

Agree with Rick, the bottom end will probably "marked" after the impact from the internals getting intimate. Good practice is to replace the shells or find yourself looking at a crank regrind and new shells all round in about 5-10k.

Back to the original garage...was the car sold with FSH? How old was it? I think you have an argument along the lines of "fit for purpose", ignoring the £300 warranty maximum...but I'm not a lawyer.

Another alternative, if the car is less than three years old, is to approach Alfa directly, but only if the car has a FSH with a VAT registered garage.

Get some advice...

wrinx

[Avocet]

I'm really baffled about this bottom end damage thing! I can't for the life of me see how an impact with a valve that barely marks the top of the piston could put loads into the big end bearings that are anywhere NEAR what they would be under normal running. Trouble is, I can't do the sums so this is all intuitive. Can anyone put some numbers on it?

For what it's worth, my wife's 156 trashed its belt and all it's inlet valves at 57,000. We didn't do anything to the bottom of the engine when we replaced the valves and it was fine. It's coming up to 90,000 now.

[dre]

bro's cars been done now,just waiting for printout on whats been done.gone from £900 to £1400,said waterpump needed replaceing ,we argued the point that they should have replaced the belt at 36000 as main dealer spec.they say thier online spec say 72000 so we spoke to another garage who checked the online spec and they came up with (36000)check belt/or 3 years (72000)replace belt or at 3 years, did say to check the belt you may as well replace it so seems pointless to say check.let you know what you get for £1400 later when we get the brakedown .thanks to all

Edited by dre on Sunday 29th June 09:22