Hey Guys

I have a 1.6 16 Valve T Reg Fiat Bravo, on the 17th of Feb only 8 months after having the cambelt changed the new one snapped. I'm a student at cov uni and have absolutly noooooo money so i took the engine out n stripped it down and rebuiklt it myself, the reason for the premature cambelt failure was that one of the cambelt bearings had seized and it caused the cambelts teeth to be ripped off!

i replaced all 16 Valves had the head remachined, replaced all the engines gaskets and put a whole new cambelt kit on aswell as new camshaft bearing and put it all back together myself! pretty happy withmyself aswell (whilst it was out i added a sachs clutch aswell) and got her back on the road at 4am Saturday 10th march!

thing is to allow the engine to re-bed itself i havent taken it above 3000rpm but the car feels exceptionally sluggish, she just doesnt seem to have any power, theres also a burning smell now and again which i'd imagine is oil on the gaskets, but the lack of power is worrying. it takes a lot to get her to move and i've stalled her about 4 times since the cambelt failure and had never stalled her once before.

any ideas? only thing i can think of is that the valves arent timed correctly but do you guys have any ideas?

Please help i'm exceptionally poor and cant be without my car! and after doing all the work i have n spent so long on it i deserve to have it working properly!

Cheers Guys

Donny

well done sorting it out yourself

it sounds like the timing is out. how did you set the timing?

well i alligned all the timing wheels back up, all the marks on them, thing is this is the first time i've ever stripped an rebuilt and engine an cam timing is obivously not my thing!

one thing that did very worry me was that when i was sitting at some lights for some unknown reason my rev counter dropped to 200rpm n then back up to idling speed of 800rpm ,only did it once but its never done it before.

any ideas?

also how much is it to have fiat check and redo your timing think i'd rather get them to do it!

Cheers Guys

Donny

(btw jug, rear lights look really good)

the problem with using timing marks after all this work is that you dont know if the camshaft pulleys went on in exactly the same positions. i assume you had to remove at least 1 of them to replace the bearing?

the best thing to do now is to use the cam locking tools to set the timing. this isnt a hard job, but the tools arent cheap. they cost £40 for your car. it would probably cost that much to have it done at a garage, and maybe they could spot any other issues while its there, so i guess taking it to be corrected at a garage is the best way forward.

also consider the possiblity of one or more valves not sealing correctly. did you grind them in when you fitted them? new valves must be ground in to get a seal. if they were not sealing you would lose compression and this would cause performance loss, often severely. a compression test would be a good way to rule out or identify this type of problem. if the timing is out a compression test would also show low compression on all cylinders.

Donny XP said:

(btw jug, rear lights look really good)

Click to expand...

thanks