Oil Leak From Injectors + Cam Belt Change Tdci

[philp1863]

Hi everyone, I am wondering if anyone can give me some tips and advice regarding my wifes Ford Fiesta. The car went for its MOT last March and failed because it was leaking from several of its injectors. I found out that this is a common problem with these engines. Originally the garage quoted a finger in the air figure of 70 quid to have the injectors fixed (I was very surprised about how low that quote was) and was not surprised when the final bill was closer to 300 quid(including the MOT). I still think that was probably fairly cheap. We had been with this garage for years, but have now decided to move on, they have made a couple of major mistakes recently.

At the time of this work I was quite busy, but they told my wife that the injectors had been leaking for quite a while and had covered quite a bit of the engine with this very hard stuff (Sorry I dont know what it is called) and that if it did start freeing off then it could interfere with other running parts of the engine possibly including the cam belt. I thought that the cam belt would be far enough away, but dont know...and all this information came from my wife who is even less of a mechanic then I am. They also showed my wife the engines cam belt which apparently had some strange marks on it, like curved lines going down the outside of the cam belt. They said that they had never seen these marks before on a cam belt and said that they thought that the belt should be replaced.

I've always and still do consider that the garage is an honest one, so I believe that the garage was doing the best it could for us (I think!)

Anyway I now have some time and want to sort the engine out myself. From what I can gather it sounds like I need to replace the cam belt and possibly try and remove all this gumph from the engine. The car has only done 33000 miles.

Questions

Has anyone ever heard of these strange marks on the belt, the mechanic definitely though that the belt was not like that when it was new...something has happened to it since. My wife is still driving the car (as little as possible). It sounds like I need to change that belt ASAP?

I presume that I need to remove this gumph from the engine (I presume that it may have even been related to the cam belt state in the first place). Will it be a hammer and chissle job, or is there any other clever way of removing this stuff from the engine?

Any comments much appreciated

Thanks