Technical Panda Multijet Cam Chain

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Technical Panda Multijet Cam Chain

kawasakikz1

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My 2007 Multijet has done 112K miles and the cam chain has started to rattle. Ive just been quoted £1000 to change it by my local garage. They say its a huge job. Reading the Haynes manual it doesn't appear so.

1/ Has anyone else had this done by a garage and at what cost?

2/ Has anyone done it themselves and if so at what heat break?

Any assistance/advice greatly recieved

Pete
 
I had mine done by a Fiat / Alfa specialist. It cost £420 all in. Big job. Takes six hours. Need to remove driver-side wheel and disassemble drivers side of the engine to get to it and then rebuild. Need to replace filters, new oil too.
 
Mine cost around £400 too - well worth doing as the old chain was slapping about quite badly. It's a horrible job since there's no room to play with.
 
Well, After discussion with my garage it was decided it was OK and didnt need doing yet. 12 hours later it snapped. The car is a write off. New Panda bourght because up to this point it had never let me down, But Ive got a 1200 petrol this time with a belt.
 
Well, After discussion with my garage it was decided it was OK and didnt need doing yet. 12 hours later it snapped. The car is a write off. New Panda bourght because up to this point it had never let me down, But Ive got a 1200 petrol this time with a belt.

BAD news.., :mad:

what are you doing with the old Panda ?,
there may well be a buyer on here,
Charlie
 
Surely you would have got much more than £200 if you had have broken it up for parts? They robbed you rightly there...
 
Not everyone has off-road parking or the time or ability to strip a car, but I agree. The headlamps, rear light clusters, front and rear bumpers and seats would have fetched more than £200 I expect. That's before you strip off engine parts like the ECU, turbo, etc. And just before it gets collected by a hi-ab, the wheels and tyres would have sold too.
 
My 2007 Multijet has done 112K miles and the cam chain has started to rattle. Ive just been quoted £1000 to change it by my local garage. They say its a huge job. Reading the Haynes manual it doesn't appear so.

1/ Has anyone else had this done by a garage and at what cost?

2/ Has anyone done it themselves and if so at what heat break?

Any assistance/advice greatly recieved

Pete
112,000 miles is a record for Fiat! The normal change interval is a pathetic 40,000 miles. First Last time I'm buying a Fiat. It may have excellent economy 50 mpg urban, cheap insurance and £30 a year road tax, but from what I've been reading about the Panda 1.3 multijet, the thing is gonna bankrupt me with frequent maintenance costs!

I've always wondered why I don't see many Fiat Panda multijets around or indeed other 1.3 multijets. It's because most of them are probably in the scrapyard having been written off due to major engine failure.

Personally I'd not pay £1000 to change the camchain, I'd just want rid of the car and get a decent reliable make like a Peugeot or VW.
 
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What the hell are you going on about? Whilst it's true that a multijet isn't as reliable as a petrol Panda, it's not unreliable. Wait till it actually breaks rather than acting like it already has.
 
I don't know where you got the idea about changing the chain every 40k miles. That's not right at all.

And the cost even at a main dealer is not £1k either. It's well known that I had chain trouble earlier this year. It spent almost all of January in the dealer. It was brought there running loudly and had thrown up a management light. I had let them know that the chain had been changed a number of months earlier and that it had been serviced again two weeks before the problem showed. They started looking at all the easier things but when that didn't show anything, they started to strip the engine and found it was the guides for the chain.

Despite all the work done, the cost still came nowhere near the £1k mark.
 
112,000 miles is a record for Fiat! The normal change interval is a pathetic 40,000 miles. First Last time I'm buying a Fiat. It may have excellent economy 50 mpg urban, cheap insurance and £30 a year road tax, but from what I've been reading about the Panda 1.3 multijet, the thing is gonna bankrupt me with frequent maintenance costs!

I've always wondered why I don't see many Fiat Panda multijets around or indeed other 1.3 multijets. It's because most of them are probably in the scrapyard having been written off due to major engine failure.

Personally I'd not pay £1000 to change the camchain, I'd just want rid of the car and get a decent reliable make like a Peugeot or VW.

1) 40k miles is not normal, they'll go for tens of thousands of miles further than that. Wee Smurf's MJ did 70k miles, I believe.

2) If maintenance costs are that much of an issue, why didn't you research the car properly before you bought it?

3) If ~£500 every 70k miles is going to bankrupt you, sell the car and use the bus.

4) You see lots of 1.3 MJ cars and vans...many just happen to be Vauxhalls. Oops, shame you didn't realise that Vauxhall's 1.3 CDTI diesel is in fact a Fiat 1.3 MJ diesel before you ranted about never seeing them. Then again, who needs to let facts get in the way of a rant, eh?

5) Sell the car if you're that unhappy with it, but try actually researching whatever you replace it with.
 
1) 40k miles is not normal, they'll go for tens of thousands of miles further than that. Wee Smurf's MJ did 70k miles, I believe.

I had got my chain replaced as a precaution at 70k miles as the specialist had advised this. It hadn't been of concern to me and hadn't had any sign of trouble with it before getting it changed. It would probably still be running fine on the original chain at over 91k miles but he put enough doubt in my mind to make me want to change it. :rolleyes:
 
As l mentioned on another thread in the Panda section, mine lasted 82,000 miles before making a noise and being replaced. For the first time I've felt compelled to put some oil in the engine before a service, half a litre a month ago.

In the last 9 years the Panda has had the following replaced:

1 X Set of Front anti-roll bar drop links.
1 X Front damper.
1 X One handbrake cable.
2 X Sets of wipers.
2 X Sets of tyres.
1 X EGR valve.
1 X Set of belts.
1 X Water pump.
1 X Camchain.
2 X Batteries.

The water pump was replaced at the same time as the belts as a precaution. At the same time the camchain and EGR valve were replaced and a service carried out.

The total bill, using FIAT components was around the £900 mark.
 
112,000 miles is a record for Fiat! The normal change interval is a pathetic 40,000 miles. First Last time I'm buying a Fiat. It may have excellent economy 50 mpg urban, cheap insurance and £30 a year road tax, but from what I've been reading about the Panda 1.3 multijet, the thing is gonna bankrupt me with frequent maintenance costs!

I've always wondered why I don't see many Fiat Panda multijets around or indeed other 1.3 multijets. It's because most of them are probably in the scrapyard having been written off due to major engine failure.

Personally I'd not pay £1000 to change the camchain, I'd just want rid of the car and get a decent reliable make like a Peugeot or VW.
You are so right, you just don't see Multijet diesels anywhere. Oh, apart obviously in the Panda, Punto, Doblo van, Idea, Alfa Romeo Mito, and Lancia/Chrysler Ypsillon.

Oops, almost forgot the Corsa, Astra & Vectra/Insignia, Vauxhall Combo, Ford KA plus various SAABs. They also appear in FIAT and IVECO vans as well as US versions of the Ducato. They are also available in boats up to 3 litres in size and 230 shp. If you want to follow the line through bigger IVECO marine diesels (they are all made by FPT when all is said and done) you can go up to 13 litres and 825 shp.

If you want to talk about being bankrupted by a small diesel, a colleague made the mistake of buying a used BMW 118d and found he needed a new ECU and fuel pump. The bill? £1,500! A few months later the turbo failed. I've no idea how much that's going to cost. At the moment he's commuting on his bicycle while he saves up enough money to have it fixed.
 
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