Hi!! I didn't know whether to start a new thread or resurrect this one, as it's the same question, but more basic! (sorry!)
How often should I change the cam belt. My fiat 500 pop has 18,000 miles on the clock and I only do about 1000/year just locally in the city. My usual place (who aren't the most honest) said to replace it every 4 years (and quoted well over £500), but when I asked another place for a quote, they said not to bother when there's less than 50,000 miles. How often does it need to be done, and what's a realistic price nowadays? (PS can you recommend a place in East/central London at all?)
The official Fiat recommendation seems to be 72,000 miles or 5 years whichever comes first. See here:
http://fiat.mopar.eu/contents/brand...elt_replacement/timing-belt-leaflets-fiat.pdf
The 1.2 engine, from about 2011 onwards (Not sure exactly what month they changed), adopted a VVT cam pulley and went up from a quoted 60hp to 69hp. This engine is found in both the Panda and 500 (maybe others too?) and became interference with this change.
Personally I start to think about changing the belts on our Panda 1.2 - and my boy's Punto 1.4 8valve - which is an almost identical FIRE engine in many respects with ours being pre interference and the boy's being post interference - when they go past 4 years/40,000 miles. Both cars are second cars so don't do the miles but run around town a lot which is actually more stressful for the belt than a car which does high mileages and longer trips. If they were doing higher annual mileages I'd probably be starting to think about looking for a suitable opportunity soon after they'd turned 4years/50,000 miles.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that low annual mileage means you can ignore it, as I said above it's just as stressful for the belt, possibly more so, than running at medium revs for much longer periods. Also as the belts age they get brittle and start to crack which isn't good. Even doing the low mileages we do (around 2 to 3 thousand a year for us and a bit more for my lad) I would still get the tensioner (which is included in every kit I've seen) and water pump (which you sometimes have to ask to be included) done every time. The main dealers seem to pump the price up steeply when you ask for the pump to also be done - around here anyway - for which there is no good reason. Yes you've got the price of the pump but there's very little extra labour compared with just doing a belt and tensioner.
My local indy Fiat garage seems to quote around £350 for the complete job including pump and that seems a reasonable price to me as the complete kit - belt, tensioner, pump and maybe a new cam cover gasket with a "dod" of sealant thrown in - is going to set him back certainly less than £100.
Been many years since I lived in west London and now living up here in Edinburgh, I'm sorry but can't help with a garage recommendation but the job's pretty simple as belt changes go and the engine has been around for a long time and is even used in the Ford Ka so I would say that almost any small COMPETENT garage should be able to make a good job of it.
Here's a video giving you some idea of what's involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3bBaYhvfEw It's recommended that you use the full locking kit to immobilize the engine when doing this job but some choose to do it this way marking the pulleys - Horses for courses I suppose and depends on a number of factors including how confident you are. Quicker to do it the tippex way as you don't have to dismantle the cam cover and install the cam locking tool. Hope some of this helps.
Regards
Jock
PS, for those who are wondering, the cam pulley on this engine is a VVT type with the front cover on it to keep the oil in. The older design is a solid cast pulley with lightening holes in it. If you are going to do this job using the locking tools and slackening the cam pulley so it can spin on the end of the camshaft you have to remove that threaded plug in the middle of the pulley to access the retaining bolt (torx type as far as I know?) If you do this be ready for a fair bit of oil to come out when you remove the plug!