Had a chat with my local mechanic yesterday, and he reckons he's fitted many Vauxhall 1.6/2L 8v engines (as in Carlton) with new cambelts after snapping their old ones. Says none had damaged valves or pistons.
Are these really non-interference engines?
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Your local mechanic is, mostly, correct.
To be pedantic, it depends on compression ratio. The high compression ratio 8v engines will touch if you are unlucky.
However, the result of the valves touching the pistons on these high compression engines is snapped rockers (They have a cunning weak spot which fails under overload conditions before any serious damage is done). These rockers are both cheap and easy to install - no bent valves.
So, for an example, an 18SE engine will not touch, while an 18SEH might.
Although many enjoy knocking Vauxhall/GM, these 8 valve engines really were ahead of their time when they were introduced in the late 70's/early 80's. To be fair, they did acquire a reputation for eating camshafts which took until 1990 and the introduction of a special (read expensive!) camshaft hardening process to overcome.
The 16 valve engines are, of course, not so forgiving.
Number_Cruncher
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