Cambelt snapped, was 8 year serviced yesterday (!)

Garage quoted:

Price to repair the current engine and replace broken timing belt is £1056.00 inc vat.
Includes 10 hours labour
Valves
Timing belt kit
Oil and oil filter
Head set and head gasket
Stretch bolts.

Pestilence! A plague, on all your houses!

Seriously considering giving up being a car owner and going green.
 
Garage quoted:



Pestilence! A plague, on all your houses!

Seriously considering giving up being a car owner and going green.

To be fair that's about what I would have expected. Reasonable even for a Ford garage. Could be done cheaper shoving on a second hand head with non-bent second hand valves already in it, but you'll still be paying most of that with the labour. As i said in my first post, unless you can sort this yourself, or have suitable mates, you're always gonna be looking at a significant chunk of what the car is worth just to fix it. Only you can decide if it's worth it or time to bail.
 
How much is a 2nd hand ford engine?

Not that much as they are readily available from write offs etc if you talking about something comming like a 1.4 or 1.6 - hence why it may be quicker and cheaper just to drop a lump in, rather than messing about with heads and valves.

Think I paid about 2 grand to drop a puma lump into my fez, but it was pretty much brand new, and that included a gear box, labour, and 700 quids worth of milltek exhaust.

If you just dropping a like for like motor in, its probably cheaper than you expect.
 
Garage quoted:



Pestilence! A plague, on all your houses!

Seriously considering giving up being a car owner and going green.

It is so not worth repairing that engine, I imagin you could get a doner engine dropped in for at least 200 quid less. It might take 2-3 hours to swap an engine, whereas it might take 8 hours plus to make good the old one.
 
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Well the car is back to life now, but the plot further thickens. After they fixed it up, the garage ran it through a (dummy) saftey check and actually failed it. A harsh fail but a fail none the less: Offside front drive shaft coupling bearing fastener insecure. He showed me the underside and it was something about a bearing that should be sitting flush and is very recessed. He also pointed out clear tamper marks on the securing bolts showing it had been accessed (indeterminably) recently. There is also an oil leak, which was green lighted on the service sheet. Both issues unrelated to the break down.

So, Dagenham Motors missed an MOT fail and an oil leak on the service. Shocking. What should I do?
 
[TW]Fox;19476861 said:
Realise that a service is not an MOT and an MOT is not a service?

Why would you expect all potential MOT failures to be checked as part of a service?

I should point out it was serviced then MOT - I did not realise it was unusual to do both at the same time :p
 
Should the fault actually have been an MOT failure, or was it simply something picked up on an independent safety check that had nothing to do with an MOT?
 
i'm sure there's atleast one MOT tester on here who could clarify that. i think MOT testers have a personal discretion at the time of testing, i had a friend who's cavalier got a fail (amongst other things) for an oil leak, though it was a bad leak, the engine and bay was essentially covered in oil
 
Ford Focus?

Cambelts are under warrenty for 100,000 miles. HOWEVER the pulleys that the cambelts use are not. And these are liable to go before the belt does.

The garage should have at very least advised you that it was due to be changed. I had mine done at 82,000 miles.

Surprised no-one picked up on this earlier, a bit of googling suggests that this has been honoured in a few cases? Did you push the issue with Ford?

Sorry if I've missed this in the thread.
 
Either way if they don't honour it... Ebay seems to have a plentiful supply of 1.6 focus engines for circa £350 quid.
 
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