Cam belt 'slipped'

[dougt]

Hi,

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend. He's got a '99 S1 elise standard model which he's owned for about 3 months now. It's a very nice car with only about 10k on the clock and no apparent signs of having been thrashed, crashed or abused by the previous owner.

The other day when it was really cold (car covered in snow I think) he went to start it but it coughed and then died. His garage (not a dealer) say the cam belt has slipped 4 teeth for reasons they can't explain, and it's bent all the exhaust valves.

I just wondered if anyone had heard of this happening before. Have there been problems with the cam belt tensioning mechanism ? The main concern (apart from the fairly sizable bill of course) is that if the root cause isn't found then the chances are it will happen again.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Doug.

[DanH]

Best place to ask technical questions is :

www.british-cars.co.uk/

and go to the Elise Technical BBS.

The mileage sounds low for a cam belt failure, but it is a 99 car so not outside the bound of possibility. I'd ask on the forum I mentioned above though as thats where the most knowledgable techy people hang out.

If she's having rebuild work like that done, it might be a nice opportunity to get the engine boosted to 160 bhp or so. It is unlikely to cost much if anything more, although there will be insurance implications etc.

[adrianr]

I suppose its possible that some of the snow could have melted and dripped in through the engine cover mesh then frozen in/around the cam belt or cogs? I this did happen I can imagine the effect would be as described and all the evidence would literally melt away.

Bummer!

Regards,
AdrianR

[dougt]

hmmm... that's a possibility, we were having repeated overnight snow at the time (Buxton in Derbyshire). My own car (alfa gtv) dove me mad by freezing up solid every night, but at least it always started once I did get into it.

Thanks for the replies I will pass on the info.

[zebedee]

thats good thinking adrian r - all the more reason to cover those engine vents when the weather gets really crap!

[Spining-v-grid]

I'm not convinced that the weather conditions had anything to do with it.

Snow melting and re-freezing is highly unlikley due to the amounts being needed to lock the engine or cause less friction to pulley/belt. The cambelt has a cover protecting the pulleys etc even though I agree it's not water tight.

Cambelts jump due to something being loose in that area, contamination of oil and water or the engine friction being more than usual. I would start to check the basics, i.e. oil and water levels including antifreeze, if ok a decent garage should be able to tell you if a tensioner has seized / collapsed etc. Even looking at the condition of the belt, if it's shiny then it's worn out.

As mentioned b4, this could be the perfect excuse for mod time. Come on engine, fail me........please

Good luck.

SVG

[gfoz]

hey! The same thing happened to me! That's the first time I've ever hear of it happening to anyone else.

On a very, very cold day in January with the car frozen solid after I'd (unfortunately) washed the car the night before too, the car refused to start. My local garage managed to start it, but instantly switched it off as it sounded awful - a good job too - no damage was done, but they did find the root of the cause - the cam belt tensioner. They replaced this and I'm smiling again