1999 HDi engine swap - It works and has driven home!

[steve_earwig]

I think there's a missing tooth on flywheels as a reference mark for the crank sensor. Or it might just be broken off...

[JonL]

But does this not rely on the timing being exactly correct at the moment. I thought that the idea having timing marks unrelated to the timing belt it so that the timing can be correctly set even when the belt has stretched a little over time.

The previous owner did say that he had the timing belt done at some point, and given that the engine is only supposed to have covered about 90,000 miles that must have been reasonably recently, so I will mark the pulleys and go forward from here.

Many thanks for the answers,

Jon

[jasper5]

But does this not rely on the timing being exactly correct at the moment. I thought that the idea having timing marks unrelated to the timing belt it so that the timing can be correctly set even when the belt has stretched a little over time.

Many thanks for the answers,

Jon

Even if you fit the belt with timing marks lined up and locked with a pin you still have to remove the pins to tension the belt, so it doesn't matter if you mark the position of the pulleys before you remove the belt or lock up the pulleys with a pin.
My view on using locking pins is that there is less chance of the pulley moving as you fit the belt, but if you mark the pulleys you still have reference points if anything moves.I've done dozens of timing belt replacements, always marking the pulleys, except the types where you have to lock up the camshaft with a tool so that the pulley is free to move so that the belt can be fitted easily.....some twincam engines for example.

[JonL]

Big weekend of work on the car, so thought I would take the opportunity to update you all (well the one man and his dog who might be interested in this thread!).

Sat saw the inlet manifold finally cleaned, it took an overnight soak in a cleaning tank followed by a though tough clean with a baby’s bottle brush! I thoroughly recommend these (pic to follow) they come with a twisted sponge on the end and then a 3” soft(ish) brush. They also have a smaller hard brush in the handle ideal for all of the nooks and crevices. Anyway the inlet manifold was back to shiny metal and the air will be able to flow down it unhindered by the tar that was there. When I went to refit it I discovered that the inlet ports in the head also needed cleaning, derrrr, so that took a little time as I was being very careful not to dislodge anything that could fall into the port and potentially cause a blockage. So after a long struggle it went on with a new gasket, donated free of charge by a main dealer! The saga over gaskets was massive and in the end I have had to reuse the metal exhaust and coolant manifold gaskets with some “gasket goo” to ensure a good seal. The exhaust fitted nicely, albeit a couple of times as I worked out the exact order to ensure that the turbo oil feed and return, inlet pipe-work, manifold studs, etc would fit.

So with all of the parts removed form the 406 engine now sitting on the 306 one I noticed that the rear engine mount was missing from the 306 engine, so that was swapped over. I then turned my attention to the timing belt. This is the first time that I have done this and so I took a deep breath and marked everything with a tippex pen, thanks for the confidence votes guys, and cracked on. The belt went on remarkably easily and once tensioned up the marks lined up again perfectly, so it is set as it was before I started and so if it is wrong it was before! The new water pump was fitted at the same time and I took the opportunity to clean and check everything as I went. That took care of Saturday.

Sunday was a bit of a washout in the morning as SWIMBO had other plans for most of it and I didn’t manage to get into the garage until after lunch. Still I cleaned the gearbox thoroughly and sorted out which clutch plate and cover I was going to use, for once they are exactly the same on the 406 and 306! Having used a micrometer to measure the thickness of the plates my old one was a little (0.4 mm) better and so was fitted and torqued up. The gearbox was then aligned and fitted, they are a little heavy and unwieldy for one person, which was a great step forward. The starter motor was then fitted and I took another deep breath and swapped the wiring loom over form the 406. Thankfully all of the sensors was in the same place, I did check but until you actually click them together it is always a worry, and that part of the process was about as easy as it has been. That meant that the engine was now ready to be put into the car, or so I thought. I had forgotten the bottom pulley and so fixed that after noticing that I had a box left over on my “new parts bench”! The bolt was a right bugger to get on, it did not want to tighten up at first, but eventually it was on and torqued up. I had a slight problem here as I had fitted the gearbox and so had no easy way of fixing the crankshaft in place. I managed to fit a screwdriver into the gap between the starter motor and the gearbox and hold the flywheel and it was done.

The next stage was to get the engine back into the car! It took two of us and a lot of manipulating but eventually it was in. On the way in I had to reconnect the power steering pump and the air conditioning pump, as they were left in the car to prevent disassembly, and I also refitted the auxiliary belt before the engine was bolted in place. Using the guide was great but “now refit aux belt” was not that helpful and it took several attempts to get the thing to fit. The only way we managed it was to fit the belt over all the pulleys and tensioners except the spring mounted one and then use a spanner and bar to move that back and slide the belt under it. It was a nightmare trying to get it fitted any other way. With that done we attached the gear linkage and most of the coolant pipe work, whilst we could still manoeuvre the engine, and then bolted it in place. At this point I called it a night and left happy in the knowledge that I was in a good place.

So things left to do are; re-connect the myriad of wires from the engine loom to the car, the remaining coolant pipes, throttle cable and anything else that I can see. I will then refill the coolant system, check the engine oil and try and start the engine! If it fires then I will then find out if I have done everything correctly and if I have bought a good engine or a pup! After that I need to refit the driveshafts, fill the gearbox back up with oil and do an engine oil service, there is currently oil in the 306 engine which will do for a quick test fire. Not much then!

Thanks for all the assistance so far and if anyone wants to place a bet on whether it starts or not I’m currently about 70% confident, I’ve never done this before so still a little pessimistic about the outcome.

[TopDonkey]

Even if you fit the belt with timing marks lined up and locked with a pin you still have to remove the pins to tension the belt, so it doesn't matter if you mark the position of the pulleys before you remove the belt or lock up the pulleys with a pin.
My view on using locking pins is that there is less chance of the pulley moving as you fit the belt, but if you mark the pulleys you still have reference points if anything moves.I've done dozens of timing belt replacements, always marking the pulleys, except the types where you have to lock up the camshaft with a tool so that the pulley is free to move so that the belt can be fitted easily.....some twincam engines for example.

I've always tensioned the belts with the crank locked and the cam locking pin still in on hdi's, once the tension is set, i then lock the cam pulley on the 3 bolts and only then do i remove the pins, a couple of rotations on the crank and put the pins back in to check the timing is spot on and its all done, i was told that timing is critical to smooth running on an HDI and that it was important that the timing belt marking method wasnt used as it wasnt accurate enough ?

[jasper5]

I don't see how the timing cannot be exactly the same whether you tension the belt with the pins in or out, how can you get it to be different?
Once the belt is on and all marks lined up there is no way of fine tuning the timing, except on earlier 1.9td engines where the injection pump can be adjusted, the injection pump on the HDi doesn't even need to be marked as you can fit the belt at any position, it's only the valve timing that you are setting, you can't alter it except by fitting the belt on with the marks out of line.
I use my method because you get a more accurate tension on the belt, I make sure that the tension is on at the injection pump side (common sense), then push the tensioner against the belt until you can just about turn the tensioner pulley by hand, with pins in you can't do that.
As I said, I use pins where you have to lock up the cam pulleys so that you can fit the belt properly, such as Mondeo where you lock the pulleys and undo the camshaft bolts, turning the pulleys until the belt fits on nicely between the 2 pulleys, then you tension the belt with these pulleys loose, then lock up the camshaft pulley bolts and check your tension..

I've done nearly 60 HDi timing belt jobs, all done my way, if I was wrong I've been wrong nearly 60 times, I've done countless others this way too.
You can follow the books all you like, doesn't mean you can't use other methods.Experience counts for a lot.

[TopDonkey]

I've used the mark the belt method before on hdi's too and never had any problems afterwards, there isnt anything wrong with this method, but it was just the book method is different

i have only done about 10 hdi cambelts, so far less than you.

It was just something i remembered from my hdi training i did many years ago, the cam to crank timing is adjustable on all HDI's, thats what the 3 bolts are for around the cam pulley, its the middle one that holds the timing plate securely against the camshaft, you insert the 8mm pin through the slot in the cam timing plate (which is behind the cam pulley), and if you undo the 3 cam pulley bolts you will have about 15 degrees of rotation on the pulley with the camshaft locked up with the 8mm pin in, its this adjustment that allows you to set the cam to crank timing so that it is spot on each time you change the belt, but again, i've never noticed any running difference afterwards whether i have used the marking or the locking method

[teamster1975]

Well done Jon! That's one hell of a weekends work!

[jasper5]

I've used the mark the belt method before on hdi's too and never had any problems afterwards, there isnt anything wrong with this method, but it was just the book method is different

i have only done about 10 hdi cambelts, so far less than you.

It was just something i remembered from my hdi training i did many years ago, the cam to crank timing is adjustable on all HDI's, thats what the 3 bolts are for around the cam pulley, its the middle one that holds the timing plate securely against the camshaft, you insert the 8mm pin through the slot in the cam timing plate (which is behind the cam pulley), and if you undo the 3 cam pulley bolts you will have about 15 degrees of rotation on the pulley with the camshaft locked up with the 8mm pin in, its this adjustment that allows you to set the cam to crank timing so that it is spot on each time you change the belt, but again, i've never noticed any running difference afterwards whether i have used the marking or the locking method

The book method is different, the book and Autodata list those 3 bolts and slots, but I've never seen these bolts or slots on any HDi that I have worked on.
Where those bolts and slots are fitted, they are only there to aid the fitting of the belt, you cannot alter the valve timing by moving the pulley unless you go further than one tooth, the book clearly states that the injection pump timing cannot be altered.
Of course anyone that uses my method does so at their own risk.

To get back on topic;
I echo teamster, very well done on the job you did so far, jon, good luck with the rest of it, sincere apologies for having the attention diverted from your awesome efforts

[steve_earwig]

Come on mate, get it going - I'm turning blue here! (seriously, well done so far, good luck with the next bit!)

Service Box has a seperate hub and gear up to build 09000 or there abouts. I guess this is what TD is talking about:

[TopDonkey]

sorry to hijack your thread Jon, but this will be my last post off topic! (sorry!)

'Where those bolts and slots are fitted, they are only there to aid the fitting of the belt'

Where do you get that information from ?, its completely wrong !

'you cannot alter the valve timing by moving the pulley unless you go further than one tooth'

Of course you can, a 2 degree offset creates a 2 degree timing change to the engine, the engine relies on a spot on accurate timing relationship between the camshaft and crankshaft and bases all its timings and calculations on these being accurate, the cam sensor measures the camshaft not the cam pulley, so any timing change you make to the cam pulley directly effects the smoothness, power and economy of the engine

'the book clearly states that the injection pump timing cannot be altered'

Well thats quite obvious on an HDI !, there is no timing to alter, the injection pump just creates a variable pressure (decided by the ecu) in the injectors all the time, the injectors are electronically fired by the ecu and the timing changes by huge amounts throughout the rev and load range, any timing changes need to be done by the ecu, there are no settings you can change to alter the timing without modifying the mapping or fooling various sensors

I'm going to get myself a reputation on here as a troublemaker if people keep trying to tell me i am wrong !, not what i want !, i just dont like to leave a thread with the wrong information on it as someone might read it in the future and believe the wrong information and mess their car up because of it

[teamster1975]

Ok that's enough guys
Carry on Jon!

[jasper5]

Agreed! Carry on Jon
TD and I will just have to agree to disagree, doesn't matter one jot anyway.

[JonL]

Guys,

Please don't worry about taking my thread off topic, I find all of the technical type discussions fascinating. From what I have read you are both agreed that you cannot alter the timing of the fuel pump as it is not timed to anything! It is simply a constant rate pump and the output is controlled by the ECU so the point, on it’s circumference, at which the timing belt drives is immaterial.

On the point of the camshaft pulley, if I am reading it correctly, the disagreement is over the ability of the standard pulley to act in the same way as an aftermarket vernier pulley, i.e. have the ability to fine tune the timing through slight adjustment. Every time I have seem this done it has involved the use of micrometers, gauges and other specialist measuring devices to determine the exact TDC and valve lift. This is needed in order to exactly set the timing as required by engines that have been “breathed” on. I have never seen it applied to any other engines as it would be overkill, the ECU normally has enough ability to detect knock and advance or retard initiation to aid smooth running. I have to admit, though, that most of my knowledge is based on petrol engines.

Back on thread:

I have not managed to get into the garage since my last update. Our telly decided that it had given up and the CRT blew with a nice bang! Thus I scoured the ads in the local Spar shop and found a 32” Sony Trinitron Vega being sold for £20, it is now in my lounge. Still I have to collect my mother from Heathrow this afternoon, and thus loose the spare car, so will be trying madly to get the car running tonight so that I can finish it and get it back to SWIMBO as soon as possible.

More later,

Jon

[eoin27]

32” Sony Trinitron Vega

Nice. Its amazing how cheap those CRT's go for now. When I worked in currys around 2005, you'd be looking at 700 for a 50hz Vega.

I hope the engine start goes well tonight. Looking forward to pics too!