406 Pulley breaking up in timing cover.

I was down the local garage the other week and he had a horror story about
one of the timing end pulleys breaking up on the 1900 diesel engine. Said it
was common.
Has anyone on here experienced such a problem??? It was a new one on me!
Not sure which one, I was assuming it was the crankshaft pulley.


Djimbo

 

NEVER HEARD OF IT BEFORE,THE ONLY WAY THAT CAN HAPPEN IS SOME ONE HAS
BEEN HITTING IT BEFORE WITH A HEAVY HAMMER,

 

I had a pulley break up on my 2.1td 406. I was lucky in that when I started
driving the car one morning, the power steering seemed very heavy. I drove
straight to my local garage, when we looked under the bonnet, there was
smoke coming from the timing belt area. It was the timing belt burning away,
so I was lucky not to have driven far.

Cheers
Neil D

 

Hi on h.d.i's this is EXTREMELY COMMON due to the double damping part of the
pulley breaking up.But on a 1.9 engine never heard of it as its a solid
pulley with a rubber damper in-built.personally i thinks its the 2.0 hdi you
are refering to ..all the best mark.

 

Cheers Mark. That sounds like the problem,
I'm feeling a bit of a burk now, it was the HDi engine we were discussing,
which of course isn't 1900 anymore doh!

What are the symptoms from a drivers point of view when they start to go,
and is it an expensive job?

rgds.
djimbo.

 

I have just changed one on a mates 406HDI. Rattling noise around
1800RPM going up the range and especially coming down. Can be heard on
idle when cold, especially when the air/con compressor is on. When you
look down on the pulley you can see shiny bits around the mounting
bolt, and lots of meatl filings all around. New one costs £145 ish
from Peugeot 0r £120 ish from Citroen!! Same part, same box, same part
number.

 

Thanks for the info Nigel.
I didn't tell the whole story.
I took the car in for a partial exhaust change (The big expensive bit)
When it came back it had symptoms identical to those described here.
(even down to rattling when the A/C is switched on)
which I thought may just be a heat shield bolting problem or something
relating to the exhaust..
It was running smooth as a nut when it went in.

Worryingly on taking it back to find nothing obviously amiss with the
exhaust
I had the discussion with the garage owner about
pulley problems, he claimed he'd fitted three in the last month.
No-one would swap an old one onto a motor just to screw a couple of hundred
for re-fitting
the origional surely?
Would it be likely to be provable one way or the other?

djimbo

 

Surely it would take a bit of time and effort to fit an old one to an
engine? At least as much in terms of labour as fitting a new one so
therefore probably not worth doing. I would be very much inclined to suspect
the exhaust system first. Can you get a second opinion/independent analysis
from another garage?

 

I sincerely hope you're right Malc, I'm just a suspicious old Hector.
Particularly when the symptoms only just started and exactly matched a
problem the garage owner felt the urge to fill me in on in great detail.
Also to assure me that it wasn't uncommon at that milleage and find no
apparant problem with what should have been a fairly simple exhaust change.

I do have it booked in in Jan to a specialist garage I know, a little
further from home.
It's even possible they checked/changed this pulley when they did the
cambelt less than 10K back.
Fingers crossed.

Djimbo

 

I hope I'm right too. <makes usual disclaimer.> Though it does seem a bit
suspicious, I still think it would cost as much to do the bodge as to do the
proper repair so I can't see what they would gain, apart from a bit of
profit on the new pulley. Unless they took the rocker cover off, mangled
the pulley and replaced the cover. Can you see any screws that look as
though they may have been removed?

 

I hope not! That would be one sad garage. I suppose it's possible, it
would only take 1/2 an hour to do. Unfortunately, not provable really.
They do go with depressing regularity. You might just have to bite the
bullet with this one!!

 

I will say that if you are going to wait till Jan to get it fixed to
use it as little as possibe. If it oes actually break up, then you run
the risk of the auxilliary belt going inside the cambelt cover and the
cambelt jumping teeth. That could well end up with major engine
damage!!
Just to add. My mates car didn't suddenly get very noisy. It built up
in volume over two months.
And toward the end it was obvious it wasn't the exhaust just by
sticking your head down by the cambelt cover!!!

 

Thanks for the advice nigel & Malc.
I'll get back with the answers after xmas ;-)
If my worst fears are correct,
I hope this one has a couple of months left in it.

Djimbo.