Hi,

My Fiesta will be 10yrs old next April, although the mileage is low. I'm looking at getting the timing belt changed in the next month or so.

The small local garage I use for servicing didn't fill me with confidence when I asked about them doing it the last time I spoke with them.  Where are people tending to go to get them changed? Local garage, main dealer, specialist etc.?

How much did it cost, and any recommendations South Yorkshire area?

Thanks! 

Taunton Ford Main Dealer £1500 ish, Local Ford Independent £1250, garage in Exmouth £1000 (about 40 miles away) Still shopping round. The garage I normally use is considering buying the tooling. They are looking at the viability. I'm same situation as you 10 years next June only done 61000.

1 hour ago, Cragrat said:

Taunton Ford Main Dealer £1500 ish, Local Ford Independent £1250, garage in Exmouth £1000 (about 40 miles away) Still shopping round. The garage I normally use is considering buying the tooling. They are looking at the viability. I'm same situation as you 10 years next June only done 61000.

Is that fir the 1.0L? It’s a longer job on that than the 1.6l with its dry belt.

1 hour ago, ChillyWilly said:

Hi,

My Fiesta will be 10yrs old next April, although the mileage is low. I'm looking at getting the timing belt changed in the next month or so.

The small local garage I use for servicing didn't fill me with confidence when I asked about them doing it the last time I spoke with them.  Where are people tending to go to get them changed? Local garage, main dealer, specialist etc.?

How much did it cost, and any recommendations South Yorkshire area?

Thanks! 

Call some in your area including Ford dealers, were they getting confused with the 1.0L, it’s seems to put a lot of garages off, the ST is more common type belt.

Some of the “specialist” ST garages are charging £5-600 for the belt and water pump, try pumaspeed or AET motorsport. Maybe get the fuel cam bucket changed aswell.

3 hours ago, MarksST said:

Is that fir the 1.0L? It’s a longer job on that than the 1.6l with its dry belt.

So is this definitely a dry belt model, and with no need for an expensive torque multiplier tool for the crankshaft pulley bolt, as depicted in the following video? (Just wondering whether to offer to do it myself).

 

5 hours ago, ChillyWilly said:

Hi,

My Fiesta will be 10yrs old next April, although the mileage is low. I'm looking at getting the timing belt changed in the next month or so.

The small local garage I use for servicing didn't fill me with confidence when I asked about them doing it the last time I spoke with them.  Where are people tending to go to get them changed? Local garage, main dealer, specialist etc.?

How much did it cost, and any recommendations South Yorkshire area?

Thanks! 

My relative's focus was done about 3 years ago by a small independent garage for only about £250, but since then prices seem to have jumped massively. Personally I did my own about a year ago, though doing it DIY is certainly not for everyone.

Assuming your engine is not the complicated kind that has a wetbelt, nor the kind requiring an expensive torque converter tool, i.e. if it's just the kind depicted in the video posted above, I'd possibly be interested in doing it for you myself if you'd be willing to bring it to me in Shropshire. I'd charge you less than the prices being suggested above. I've done my own on my Focus, and I'm perfectly comfortable with what's depicted in that video. To be clear I'm not a pro working at a garage, it'd be a DIY job at my home.

I estimate that it would cost you under £50 in fuel for a round trip. It's typically strongly recommended to replace the water pump at the same time as the belt, and it cost me about £60 in parts when I did mine on my Focus a year ago. I might have to get a couple extra things tool wise, but that wouldn't cost me much. It would take several hours, assuming not running into any unexpected complications. You may end up needing to stay somewhere overnight, or pay for travel home of course. I'm sure we could agree upon a reasonable price that still saves you some money over a garage. Would you be interested?

The only difficulty I foresee would be finding the torque specs to tighten things back up correctly. There's no ST-specific Haynes manual, so I'd need someone knowledgeable on this to help me find the relevant info.

5 hours ago, Cragrat said:

Taunton Ford Main Dealer £1500 ish, Local Ford Independent £1250, garage in Exmouth £1000 (about 40 miles away) Still shopping round. The garage I normally use is considering buying the tooling. They are looking at the viability. I'm same situation as you 10 years next June only done 61000.

As above^, if yours is the kind depicted in the video, I'm also possibly interested in offering to do it for you as a DIY job for a lot less. You're quite a long way from me in Shropshire, but I estimate it would only cost somewhere around £80 in fuel as a rough ball park for a round trip.

Hi There, Had my relatives cae done 1.25 2010 85,000 mileage this year

              This was done at independent car garage which deals with Ford vehicles.

£400 for dry cambelt, tensioner and bolt. Then also water pump which was noisey

and leaking, So total £545 Engine much quieter and piece of mind to end of

life of car. Ask around other fiesta owners at work or social for referances garages.

                                 Hope that Helps Henry

Rd457... Thanks for the offer although I'd feel more comfortable having it done with a full warranty etc.

Just been in to my local Ford dealer this afternoon. They said £642 all in, with water pump, pulleys etc. Not as bad as I expected. When I looked at PumaSpeed a few months ago, the website said (I think) £638.

I'll keep looking.

On 7/6/2023 at 9:40 PM, MarksST said:

Is that fir the 1.0L? It’s a longer job on that than the 1.6l with its dry belt.

Yes mine is the wet belt 1.0 ecoboost. One garage estimated having the car for 2 days.

On 7/7/2023 at 6:36 PM, ChillyWilly said:

Rd457... Thanks for the offer although I'd feel more comfortable having it done with a full warranty etc.

Just been in to my local Ford dealer this afternoon. They said £642 all in, with water pump, pulleys etc. Not as bad as I expected. When I looked at PumaSpeed a few months ago, the website said (I think) £638.

I'll keep looking.

No problem, I understand.

Just FYI in case you change your mind, I was going to suggest something like this: If we estimated £50 for your travel costs (£30 for fuel and £20 for bus fare), £75 for parts (a good quality timing belt and water pump kit), and £300 for my time and the few items I'd need to get, that would cost you in total around £425, which would be about £215 less (a neat 33%) than what you've just quoted, actually a little better than that since you'd have some travel costs getting to the likes of pumaspeed.

If I might say a word about my competence, should it improve your comfortability at all - before tackling my own timing belt a year ago I didn't just read the Haynes manual and watch videos of the procedure, I wanted to make sure I knew everything I needed to know to do the job properly and so I ended up spending a lot of time reading up on topics like torque vs. angle tightening, 'torque to yield', and how things like lubricants, antiseizes and threadlockers can affect the coefficient of friction, until I was comfortable that there wasn't some crucial piece of knowledge that I was lacking. Since successfully pulling it off I've been watching daily videos on youtube made by a professional master technician going about his job and from that I've grown enormously in confidence in my ability to do major car work.

Regarding your reference to warranties, I'm not sure what I could say or offer to make you sufficiently comfortable. Good quality parts do typically come with their own warranties, and I suppose in the very unlikely event that a part we bought turned out to be bad I could offer to refit the warranty replacement without recharging you for my time (though some parts warranties do cover labour apparently). When it comes to the work of professional mechanics it seems that the consumer rights act requires that work is carried out with "reasonable care and skill", that if a repair is done incorrectly that it must be redone for free, and if through negligence they damage your vehicle they may be responsible for repairing it for free. That law does not apply to me doing it for you, but I guess you can be reassured from the above that I'd certainly carry it out with "reasonable care and skill", I can't imagine how I might theoretically do it wrong, but if somehow I did I'm a reasonable person and I'd want to put it right. When it comes to the concept of breaking something we need to be careful to clarify this, it's very normal for components to sometimes break when being dismantled despite taking reasonable care with them, which wouldn't be my fault. There're just a few parts of the job where I'd have to take particular care not to put myself in a sticky situation damage wise - ensuring it's securely held up by jack stands and wheel chocks (I'd triple check for my own safety and I also have a good secondary backup), ensuring the engine is safely supported when one of the mounts is removed (no problem), ensuring I restore fluids at the end (may help to put a sticky note on the steering wheel as a reminder), and turning the motor over by hand after setting timing to make absolutely certain it's timed correctly (standard procedure). I don't see myself making any mistakes here.

But again I understand if you're still uncomfortable and no hard feelings if you go with a pro. 🙂

17 hours ago, Cragrat said:

Yes mine is the wet belt 1.0 ecoboost. One garage estimated having the car for 2 days.

You perhaps already know all about ecoboom? If I were you I'd probably be wanting to get it done now rather than waiting out the remaining year on Ford's schedule. The big problem with these engines is not the typical risk of your timing belt cracking and snapping when it gets too old, its that the belt degrades in the oil it runs through, clogging up the oil pump's filter with debris, which eventually results in the engine being starved of oil causing irreparable damage, requiring a new engine at a cost of a few thousand pounds. It's uncertain whether this happens due to the oil often used by garages not being to Ford's spec, use of "engine flush" products, or possibly even from fuel leaking into the engine. Whatever the cause this is a very common problem and was naturally unintended by Ford's engineers, so sticking to Ford's schedule in this situation may not be a good idea.

As indicated above, I'm somewhat reluctant to offer to do yours for you considering it's an 1.0 ecoboost, which is for the following reasons:

• The 'crankshaft pulley bolt' needs to be tightened exceptionally tight, requiring a special 'torque multiplier' tool (code 303-1611-01 I believe), which is rather expensive to get a hold of. To give an idea of cost, there's a suitable one on ebay going for £600. There are other models meant for lugnut situations that could perhaps be utilised, at a cost more around £250, but I've no idea how practical that is. Sealey's proper one for this situation is about £900; they do have a different model that can be obtained for about £350 but I don't know if there's an adapter suitable for your engine. Being able to hire one would be great, but I don't know anywhere that hires them out. I suppose you could buy one and then try to resell it later at a slight loss. A theoretical alternative would be to spend around £100 on a 3/4" torque wrench and breaker bar, capable of doing the 300Nm+90degrees tightening (without breaking), however it's very questionable whether I could muster the strength needed.
• The procedure seems to require part of the exhaust being removed, and that could potentially be a nightmare. Exhaust bolts can sometimes be heavily rusted into place requiring destructive methods to remove them. This can involve using things like mini angle grinders, blow torches, and I've even seen welding equipment deployed. I'm really not well equipped to handle this, though it's not insurmountable.
• Due to the need to clean out the oil pump filter (or replace the oil pump) and replace the pump's belt you need to get the engine sump off, which also requires draining the oil. This isn't a big deal in itself, however the air conditioning pump is bolted onto the sump and those bolts apparently commonly seize into place, sometimes snapping upon attempted removal, sometimes simply refusing to budge, creating a similar difficulty to the exhaust bolts. There is a way around this, you can simply leave the pump attached to the sump and disconnect the pipes from the pump, but doing that requires properly extracting the refrigerant from the system and restoring it later, which even if I had the equipment for (I don't), I cannot do per the law since you need a qualification now which is very expensive to obtain, so we'd need an actual garage to handle the refrigerant, though that would not be very expensive I believe.
• I have no idea whether or not putting coolant back into this system requires a special vacuum-fill procedure, which if so would require a vacuum pump and some tubing adapters/valves, costing somewhere around £100 I expect.

As a very rough thought exercise:

• In terms of travel costs, your fuel costs would be lower than I estimated, I used an mpg of 30, but it would probably be more like 45 for your vehicle, so about £55 for a round trip. Plus a bit more to use the buses to get back home and come pick it up again.
• It seems to be universally considered a horrible job, and with so much unknowable about just how difficult and time consuming it might get depending upon the condition of things it's hard to put a number on labour. I'd perhaps want to ask for anywhere from say £300 to say £600.
• Parts needed would include timing belt kit (belt, tensioner, water pump, new bolts), oil pump belt, possibly new oil pump, a new rubber seal for the coolant passage, a round metal disc to be fitted behind the crankshaft pulley, possibly a new front crankshaft oil seal, possibly a new rocker cover gasket. I also saw someone checking the condition of an 'oil pressure solenoid' while they had access to it. Let's just guess at £150 for all of this.
• About £80 of timing tools would be needed.
• Potentially some relatively small cost for professional AC refrigerant handling.
• Potentially some equipment/professional cost for refilling coolant via vacuum filling if necessary.
• Potentially some costs involving tools for hacking out seized exhaust bolts, and/or AC pump bolts, and getting replacements. E.g. getting a decent mini axel grinder, and/or a blow torch.
• Then of course the big cost of the torque multiplier.

There's quite a bit of unknown here, quite a bit of potential expense on tooling, though when it comes to tooling there's always the potential to resell (likely at a slight loss). Maybe, and it's a big maybe, if you resold tools, the absolute best scenario could be that you end up with it having cost you something like £500-800 doing it through me, but again so many unknowns.

Hi I will be getting the belt changed in Sept, by then it will be 9 1/2 years old and about 62000 miles. I'm still looking around but it will be somewhere reasonably local. The garage I usually use will be my first port of call if they do decide to go down this route and buy the tooling. It's walking distance.

On 7/6/2023 at 8:26 PM, Cragrat said:

I'm same situation as you 10 years next June only done 61000.

I would recommend you get it done now or asap, all new seals, gaskets, oil pump belt, oil filter and fresh oil to the correct spec.

I would not recommend it done without the sump removed, oil pump either replaced or thoroughly cleared of any debris in the strainer mesh.

Note: The use of a breaker bar and pipe for the crank bolt is just about possible but only where you have considerable access to the bolt itself and a large arc of motion (between the ground and the vehicle). Personally I could not use this method on a Focus for that reason (not because of physical strength). Removing the front end of the car or raising the car on a lift may overcome that if available.

On 7/7/2023 at 6:36 PM, ChillyWilly said:

Just been in to my local Ford dealer this afternoon. They said £642 all in, with water pump, pulleys etc. Not as bad as I expected. When I looked at PumaSpeed a few months ago, the website said (I think) £638.

I'll keep looking.

Bearing in mind the considerable work involved and the required parts, those quotes look very reasonable to me. As you are intending to get it done anyway, my friendly advice would be to get it done asap rather than keep looking.

37 minutes ago, RayC333 said:

my friendly advice would be to get it done asap rather than keep looking.

Ditto !!

Just imagine how totally, shall we say 'disappointed' ? you will be if the belt fails in August and your engine becomes scrap.

 

It's a difficult one with cambelts...  On one hand, yes you'll be annoyed if the belt fails at 9.5 years...but on the other hand, you can end up creeping further and further back and ultimately wating money unnecessarily trying to find that 'peace of mind' that never really does exist.  (Been there, done that...)

Interestingly, VW have just changed their cambelt intervals...they've lengthened them to 10 years for diesels, and 15 years or 180k for petrol's! 😮 

(Still waiting on proper confirmation as it's literally changed this week - don't suppose anyone on here works for VW?  Seems like a lot of Ford workers drive VW's on the other site!  )

3 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

Interestingly, VW have just changed their cambelt intervals...they've lengthened them to 10 years for diesels, and 15 years or 180k for petrol's! 😮 

Crikey! I wonder, if you bought a petrol car in 2030, if you could find someone in 2045 who still knew how to change a cambelt? 😀

Could last 24yrs like my dads Suzuki, but being ford maybe not.

 

3 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Crikey! I wonder, if you bought a petrol car in 2030, if you could find someone in 2045 who still knew how to change a cambelt? 😀

Don't point @StephenFord to this comment , you know how twitchy he is about these things. 🤣🤣🤣

Oh, too late🤣🤣

It will be interesting to hear from people who have had wet belts changed 

and paid the expensive bill, what was the condition of the belt like !!

With regular oil changes with correct grade !! would be slightly miffed 

If paid all that money and mechanic said was in good condition!! 

The gamble you take i guess!

 

Yes it's the gamble you take,for me personally with cambelts it's better to be safe than sorry, no buts, ifs, whats etc etc

5 hours ago, Steveostit14 said:

It will be interesting to hear from people who have had wet belts changed 

and paid the expensive bill, what was the condition of the belt like !!

With regular oil changes with correct grade !! would be slightly miffed 

If paid all that money and mechanic said was in good condition!! 

The gamble you take i guess!

 

You can find several examples of the work being carried out on youtube. In every video I've seen the belt was been found to be clearly deteriorating and the oil pump filter (gauss) getting very clogged up with debris.

Just to update on where I'm at... After getting a price of £642 at my local Ford dealer, I messaged 3 other Ford dealers in the area, and the local backstreet garage I use for servicing and MOTs.

The garage looked into it but said it would cost them £500 for a timing tool, so they weren't interested.

One dealer haven't replied. Another asked for my reg. no. to make sure they priced it correctly, then said £950! and they'd need it 2 days.

The final dealer said £551 inclusive of water pump, VAT etc. Really happy with that so I've just messaged then to book it in week after next when I'm off work. Just hope they've got a record of the price they quoted as it was a phone call back.