Timing belt vs timing chain

Originally Posted by AlfaLincs

The spaghetti hoops that Lada used to make their chains were Heinz.

Tesco Stripey!!!

ford V6's cologne and essex were gear driven cams, as were honda VFR bike engines..

failure on the honda engine is unheard of, it would be on the ford engines too had the numpties not made the gears from cardboard ( i kid you not!)

Didn't the Essex V6 suffer from broken timing gears due to them being made of a Fibre based material?

I am sure my dad replaced the one on his Reliant Scimitar with a metal one.

I'm surprised no-ones mentioned gear driven cams. Yes, they're complicated & expensive, but they're durable and quiet.

I remember a company used to do a conversion for V8 Range Rovers a loooong time ago (pre BMW days!), although I think it was a similar lubrication arrangement to chains, i.e they are mounted internally & run in a constant bath of oil.

most american engines (including the rover) can be converter with a pete jackson gear drive. available in quiet or 'whines like f**k' versions

Originally Posted by symonh2000

The thing with chains is that they need to be lubricated, where as belts don't I reckon that would be the most difficult/expensive part of any conversion.

Those with 2.2 JTS engines should be slightly wary of the camchains, I read on Honest John that 2.2 litre Vauxhalls with the similar engine are suffering cam-chain failures due to lubrication issues. I hope the Alfa Unit is immune to this.

I heard the above before, regular oil changes are essential to protect chain, the above issue is caused by lubrication jet for the Timing Chain getting blocked due to poor oil quality. Alfa say every 30k km (18.6k miles) or every two years which ever comes first. Personally for peace of mind I'm changing the oil in my 2.2jts every year or 15k km (9k miles). Did first service after a year last month and the oil (Selenia Star 5w 40) certainly looked like it needed changing despite only 8k km (5k miles). For the relatively modest price of 6 litres of oil (it takes 5.4L) and an oil filter its better to change for the health of the engine, economy and as I already said, peace of mind.

Originally Posted by NordicI55

I heard the above before, regular oil changes are essential to protect chain, the above issue is caused by lubrication jet for the Timing Chain getting blocked due to poor oil quality.

Correct cause of failure but not necessarily poor quality oil. My boy's VX engine failed in precisely this way and was never on poor quality oil (unless you consider top brand fully synthetics to be poor quality). The mod was to have a bigger oil jet I believe. Hugely expensive getting all the bits of metal out of the engine, new head/valves etc., etc.

While we are at it, chains don't really undergo a permanent "stretch" - they wear at the pins and so become sloppy lengthwise. Old motor bike chains are the best example.