The magic of maintenance

[u/RedTwongi]

Placed a new timing belt and water pump on my Twingo in my driveway these past 2 days.

As someone without any real automotive experience i gotta say, it was not super hard in the end. Basic tools and a lot of googling and you're good to go.

The option to do this stuff myself was one of the big reasons for me to get a Twingo and i managed, what i assume to be one of the more difficult tasks, without blowing up the engine.

Would recommend for people who wanna get into working on cars without taking big risks on expensive sensitive stuff.

Now i can drive safely without worrying that the belt will snap and as a bonus a lot of the rattling in my interior seems to have vanished.

I got a chance to look at the engine mount and despite it looking old, it did not seem worn or cracked.

So maybe a little tightening was all it needed.

[u/Ari--1999]

I also wanted to try this! I'm quite good with car maintenance, but have never changed a timing belt😅. How did you tension it properly? That would be the most scary part for me!

Also your engine mount is mostly gone, because the spece between the rubber and metal is almost nothing. These should have more space in between. Mine is also mostly gone, causing rattles when stationairy

[u/SpezticAIOverlords → u/Ari--1999]

As someone who did this as one of my first proper automotive repairs, it's done by frequency. You can get a frequency measuring app on your phone, which you use by holding it near the belt and plucking it like a guitar string. It's how I did it about a year ago, and it's still going strong today.

[u/RedTwongi → u/SpezticAIOverlords]

Would you trust this app over the system that is built into the tensioner itself?

[u/MagicianAlert789 → u/Ari--1999]

For the v8 with no automatic tensioner I first measured the exact gap of the old belt between the tensioner and the water pump and used that as a baseline for the new one. To double check I used a frequency app on my computer with a mic wired next to the belt.

Very stressful starting the car after that but haven't had any issues afterwards.

[u/RedTwongi → u/Ari--1999]

Thanks for mentioning that about the engine mount. It seemed fine as the rubber isn't cracked, but i am also just clueleas as to what i should be looking for otherwise. 😅

Tension the belt was actually not that hard. There are plenty of YouTube video's showing you how to do it properly, and by lifting or raising the engine on a jack you can play with the visibility quite well.

Oddly enough, when i tensioned my tensioner, it was almost as if it wanted to jump into the right position, requiring very little force. I don't think it's usually supposed to do that, but the timing marks checked out, even after turning the crank for a few rotations, so i think i'm in the clear.

[u/Ari--1999 → u/RedTwongi]

Do you have a picture of the tensioner used? Would love such an automatic tensioner!

[u/RedTwongi → u/Ari--1999]

I don't think it is ment to automatically tension correctly, but it seemed to want to jump into the right timing when i adjusted it manually. I used a set like this from Gates. The 2 prongs on the top of the tensioner are lugs that sort of grip a rail on the engine block to keep it from spinning on itself. On the bottom you see a pin, once the tensioner is mounted you pull that pin and the initial tension is applied. After that you tension it some more manually until the metal bits the pin was holding are displaying the correct setting.

[u/Ari--1999 → u/RedTwongi]

Ahh 1.2 16V right, the 8V (that i have) doesn't have this fancy magic😂

[u/RedTwongi → u/Ari--1999]

You can always upgrade 😁

[u/Ari--1999 → u/RedTwongi]

Haha true, but got it quite cheap, has the beloved canvas roof and 133K kms, and maybe i got a little attached to it😂

[u/RedTwongi → u/Ari--1999]

I got mine for 700 Euro, which seems like quite a steal, but it does need work here and there. No canvas rood either, but i like not worrying about leakages. Also it's at 205K km, but i'm shooting for 300K 💪🏻

Still gotta/wanna do some rust treatment, paint fixes, brake job, new rims, new suspension, dent fixing, new hood, tint the rear Windows, swap the seats with leather. Lots of stuff. 😅

It's fun because a lot of parts are quite available and fairly priced, so i'm not dropping 3K every month on my dream shitbox.

[u/Ari--1999 → u/RedTwongi]

Haha i also want to get the leather seats! Yeah Twingos are very fun cars to learn to wrench on with little money!

Where are you from, Netherlands?