A colleague walked in to my office this morning, slightly ashen of face.

His car had conked out on the roundabout outside the building (there's the good luck bit of the story so far), after making what he described as "a sound like a hoover", followed by cutting out noisily and stopping dead. The car then seemed to want to turn over, but couldn't.

Astra G, 1.6 petrol, 52 plate, manual.

Mr AA arrives to inspect the vehicle and diagnoses a broken cambelt tensioner, but with an intact cambelt apparently sitting around in the engine bay, but having been thrown off the mechanism.

The car has now been recovered to the owner's driveway to await his local trusted indie in his mobile van.

Is the tensioner breaking likely to have caused any terminal engine damage, or, as the belt itself is still intact, is this gentleman likely to have got away with it, and the car will only require a new tensioner to get it back on the road?

I would be interested to hear opinions as he's already panicing about the car being beyond reasonable economic repair.

Cheers all.
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I have a 1.9 TDI Fabia (it is great 80%) of the time it is an 03 plate
Owned for 2 years


The problem with it.

When the engine is warm, and I am driving (typically on the motorway) it starts to jitter, sometime with a loss of power, I can either accelerate pass the engine vibration or slow down and they seam to go away and then accellerate again. But it will come back when it has done it once.

I have tried better fuel, and the fuel "cleaners" / fuel additaves from Halfords it got a bit better. But it is still happening at least 2 - 3 times a week now, the garage seam confussed.

When it behave like this the engine will sound rough at idel, if I stop it and start it within 5 minutes it will misbehave again.

Any advice, suggestions would be great.

{subject header made less vague by giving a brief description of the question being asked} Read more

Has anyone out there done a cambelt replacement on a 2005 Chevy (Daewoo) Tacuma 1.6SX? It has the four pot DOHC 'Family 1' GM engine. Are there any pitfalls? Is the special tool realy required to tension the belt or can something else be used? I have done the 'belt on a Daewoo Matiz and it was easy but the Tacuma looks a totally different story. Any advice please. Read more

Well I knew the car needed fuel because the display said "low fuel level" and the yellow light was on in case I couldn't read. The computer also said I had fuel for 34 miles so I arrived at the filling station with 27 miles to go. It was awkward because it was busy and I didn't see one row of pumps had jackets on the nozzles until I turned in. As I had the trailer on I thought I would be less of a nuisance going out again, round the roundabout 150 metres away and approaching from the other direction. Just as I was leaving the station, the engine coughed. I made it to the roundabout by the power of prayer and it died completely half-way round.
As I was calling the recovery people, a chap in a scruffy grey 4x4 pulled alongside my left window and offered me a tow. As I was nothing short of a blooming hazard where I was, I accepted. He towed me to the filling station where we ended up out of the way but nowhere near a pump. I was then obliged to buy a horrible plastic can and put 4½ litres of diesel in the car; the other ½ litre having foamed out of the can at my feet. I checked the manual for a fuel primer but none was mentioned so I turned the key and the engine started as though nothing had happened.
The engine management light gleamed on the dash and the display said "Anti pollution fault". Having cancelled the recovery service and got home, I disconnected the battery and came inside for a coffee. It was just the same when I restarted the car half an hour later so I Googled the phrase on the display. It was all very depressing with mention of Eolys fluid, particle filters, hazardous waste and big bills.
I'm not a great subscriber to the world of coincidence so I sat in the car and reset every function on the computer I could think of including the one that says "Check control" which isn't in the manual and I've never known what it is. Next time I started up the engine management light blinked and went out. Sheer luck, I call it. As has happened before when I have disconnected the battery, it feels like I now have another 20bhp under my right foot before the computer gets used to my turgid driving style again.
OK, thank you for listening, you can get back to your lives now. Read more

The recent cold weather has shown that the battery on my 2002 1.4 tdi Polo is getting a little tired so I am going buy a new one.
I want one of good quality so I have checked out my local VW dealer who with fitting
wants a total of £150 (£133 + £17) for a 72 amp battery.
Halfords want £95 + £5 fitted for a 70 amp battery.
I am confident of the quality of the battery from the VW dealers but how good are the
batteries from Halfords, am I correct in thinking that a difference of the amp hours
(70/72) of these batteries is negligeable .
If I do find or anyone knows of a quality battery from elseware and I have to fit it myself am I likely to mess up the electrics when I disconnect the old battery and reconnect the old one.
One problem I have heard of is having to put a live feed to the radio so you dont
have to mess about recoding it, how do you go about this and any other tips if needed
would be appreciated.

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