Howdy all,

I recently bought my mum's old car, a Ford Fiesta 1.25 Si (R Plate).
I noticed that its never had its timing belt replaced, and so decided to get that done right away, and this is the problem I have hit.

The garage I took it too said that they couldn't change the belt because the bottom pulley's bolt is seized on and they can't budge it.

Has anyone had this problem? Or know a garage that can sort this issue out? (I'm in Manchester)
I would like to get the belt changed, as I think the interval is 10 years / 100k, and when it comes to timing belts I am a bit on the paranoid side.

Cheers

Welcome to the sight mate, its nice to see the mk4si makin an appearence. Did the garage not even give it a try? Im sure you couldnt have brought the first car to suffer this problem there. Id recommend the garage i take my car to as im only in rochdale but i think the best thing to do is ring around your more local garages and tel them your problem and see what they say.

Cheers for the reply

The garage did give it a try, and even suggested heating the bolts to try to loosen them.
However, they did state that doing so could weaken them and if they snapped - goodbye engine.
So, I elected to not try that.

Asked a Ford dealership, and they wanted £280 just for the belt, £380 with both pulley's (All in charge) - No chance!

I am at a loss at what to do next, the belt is 12 years old now, and I really don't want another belt snapping on me (Thats what happened to my old car).
So, even if I have to drive upto Rochdale, i'm game for that.

Would drilling the bolts out be an option? Provided I could find somewhere that can do that.

ive had this problem before on mk6 1.25 fiesta, couldn't budge the pully bolt so had to smash the bottom cover off (i know its not ideal but could do the cambelt and the customer was more than happy for me to do this)

Does that mean that the belt would be open to the elements once its all put back together?
Could try that as a last resort I suppose.

What are the belts like on the Zetec's? Do they go really early?
I don't like the idea of driving around on a belt past its best for too long, and with starting Uni very soon
and having to commute to Bolton everyday, makes me a touch jittery.

With the lengh of time you say its been on id change just to be on the safe side, especailly if you have plans for the car in the future. Like i said Just give some garages a call and explain the problem to them best you can, if they give you "well just bring it in and we'll have a look" ring another until they tell you what theyre willing to do so you dont waste your time on another garage that will do naff all.

i come across a couple of bolt freeing techniques which may help:
http://www.3geez.com/forum/showthread.p ... ght=frozen
http://www.glencoyne.co.uk/belt.htm
hope they help.

would think this is a fairly common problem, which a decent garage could sort, may cost bit more though if first garage chewed up the bolt trying and if like 3.5 Si may need to drop the engine to get better access to it, think problem with heating pully up is they may be a damper pully which has a rubber insert

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Will

Heating the bolt up to much will more than likely damage the oil seal on the crank. When i worked in a garage, we put a big breaker bar on the bolt, lowered the car down near to the ground, Then turned the engine over slightly so the bar smacked against the floor and shocked the bolt loose. Done it a few times and seemed to work every time. Worth a try and as been said a good garage will have had the same problem before.

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Need any fiesta parts give me a try. Have spares for zetec and fiesta turbos

That does work too, could get them to try and tighten the bolt then losen it, works sometimes, and to you earlier post, the belt behind the crank pulley would be open to the elements but its still better than the belt snapping

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Will

Thanks everyone for the replies, I really appreciate it

Going to take it down to a few more garages to see if they have any more success.
I'll print out these replies to see if I can instill some idea's into them.

Once again, thankyou all for the help