Hi all

Sorry, we're talking wet belts again. In a past life I had some exposure to boroscopy in aviation and as the once-unwitting owner of a 140ps 1.0 (68 plate) I find myself in the position to start worrying about my wet belt. I really don't have £1300 for the belt change job (north Wilts area) as I support my wife through her illness, and the car doesn't have enough value to find a satisfactory replacement vehicle.

My question is, is it possible to get a boroscope into the engine far enough to get a look at the wet belt and judge degradation? Would dropping the sump give enough access? I can't help but think that some of the 'change super early to avoid any doubt' comes from a position of drivers and/or mechanics who haven't the need to get a small loan in order to fund that sort of work.

If scoping the belt is possible, are there diagrams anywhere public to show the route to reach the belt?

Cheers!

I don't know the answer to your question but if you change your own Oil then you can do as I do and run the old Oil through very fine sieve, any bits of Belt will be obvious.

Hi,

You can potentially get a borescope up through the drain plug and it may be possible to see the strainer, thats the first thing to block when the belt degrades. you will only see the oil pump belt i suspect from within the sump.

if its never had a belt done, then id expect the strainer to have bits in it. every single car ive done the belts on has had. regardless of mileage and service record.

if you cant afford to have the belt done, and unlkely to while owning it, then I strongly suggest selling and finding something else

As its not going to get any better.

The second best option if scoping the sump isn't possible would be to remove the cambelt cover. That allows you to see a small section of the belt across the top, and you can use a mirror to look at the teeth underneath. Not a perfect test of course, but none of them are, which is why belt replacement is the only realistic option to prevent potential catastrophic engine damage. I don't think many people do it on a whim, it's a huge chunk of money for anyone owning an older car. I personally would never have spent that much on a car of that age, I've sold or scrapped cars needing just £500's worth of work, but the car world is different nowadays, and the older cars are still holding value.

give it another 5 years and the ammount of cars with these engines will be going to the crusher. noone is going to want to spend that money on a car thats 10+ years old and worth a couple of grand. they will become harder to sell, pushing the value down even further.

I was offered a 64 plate focus cheap because it needs a belt. 50k miles, nice car to look at and drive, but coming on 12 years old, subframes starting to rot, broken springs, brakes all round needing done. So I declined. and thats with me doing the work myself with no labour charges.

theres just not enought money in it, or the demand for these cars with these engines.

There's no good answer to this, unfortunately.

• You might get the belts done for a little less if you shop around - a friend paid around £1k at his trusted usual service garage.

• If the belt fails before 10 years, and you have a provable full service record, you might qualify for Ford's extended goodwill scheme - though we've yet to hear from anyone who actually has!

• Otherwise, around £3.5-4k is the cheapest we've seen for a new engine (fitted)

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• Or just wait for failure to happen and sell the car as a non-runner

• Even a swap to another vehicle of similar age/value will probably incur a "cost to change" exceeding the cost of belt replacement.

NB: totally off topic - I didn't put the bullet points in - the new update must have done it!😀