Timing Belt.

[blue flash]

Hi guys, my car is going for an my next month. And going to change the timing belt (it's done 75 thousand miles) does any body think it's worth changing the water pump at the same time. Any ideas as to what make is best for belt and pump. Cheers.

[Mr Singh]

my mums cam belt was replaced a few weeks ago. you could replace the water pump but it wasn't replaced on mums.

we supplied the parts from ford and got another garage to fit them for us. try ford for prices and then look else where but id recommend genuine bits as you don't want them to fail and leave you with a costly bill afterwards

ford recommend replacing the alternator and a/c belts at the same time as they are stretch belts and have to cut off

[L666JER]

You might as well do the water pump whilst the timing belt is off, if you don't and the pump fails, you have toke the belt off again. We used a Continental belt on the XR3i, seems alright.

[JW1982]

In my opinion changing the waterpump also depends on the engine type. On some engine types it it not nescessary to remove the timing belt when changing the waterpump.

On the early Focus MK2 1.4 and 1.6 Duratec (built up to 04-2005) for example the waterpump can be changed without removing the timing belt. On later versions of this engine Ford changed the waterpump and belt tensioner whit the result that the waterpump can not be changed anymore without removing the timing belt.

This year I changed the timing belt of my 2005 MK2 1.6 Duratec myself following the procedure which is prescribed in the Ford ETIS workshop manual. To do this I bought all needed special tools online (Ebay) for a fair price. I installed a new Contitech timing belt kit (belt, tensioner and all needed bolts) and Contitech stretchbelts.I paid about €100,- for parts and about €50,- for the special tools. It took me 5 hours to change the timing belt and clean all parts I removed. I decided to not change the waterpump because my car has only done 80.000 KM and changing the pump can be done in 2 to 3 hours.

[blue flash]

Ok thanks for the info guys.