Nexia glxi 1600 16v automatic engine dead

[skylark]

Hi,

I've a 1997 nexia automatic with the 1598cc DOHC 16v engine. It died on me on the M25. I was rolling along at about 70mph when I heard what sounded like a ticking noise. After about 30 seconds of trying to work out if it was a rattle in the glove box we found out that it wasn't as all power was lost and we ended up on the hard shoulder.

I took a look under the lid and saw some smoke coming from the crank side of the engine - not a great deal but some. It was looking like a cam belt failure so I made a call to green flag.

Green Flag arranged for a chap with a tow truck to attend. Not good because they usually just want to tow you away - and charge you for it. I don't think he was a qualified mechanic and just confirmed my fears by pronouncing it a cam belt failure without doing any investigation.

The car is now sat outside my home where I have been able to have a look at the engine.

I can't get the cam belt cover off because there is not enough clearance to remove the pump pulley so I can only really see the top of the cam pulleys. The cam belt looks fine. It seems tight and shows no sign of missing teeth or other wear.

I am getting good sparks from all the plugs. The no. 3 cylinder plug looks oily but all the others look good. There seems to be a certain amount of oil around the lower part of the engine. There is fuel getting to the injectors and by taking the plugs out after turning the engine over I can detect that fuel is getting into the cylinders.

I can't see any problems under the cam cover. I can't see any sign of wear on the cams or broken springs.

The engine turns over but none of the cylinders fire.

Now, I am wondering if the head gasket has gone but I can't see why all the cylinders fail to fire.

The car is nine years old. It had the following service history:
Delivery date: 3/8/97
10000 miles/12 month service 10/98 6000 miles on the clock.
20000 miles/24 month service 10/99 11000 miles
no 30000 mile service logged in the book.
40000 miles/48 month service 11/01 22000 miles (major service)

At about this time daewoo went t*ts up. Since then the car has had basic oil/plugs/filters changes.

It has now done 58000 miles.

I am not a mechanic so it's all uninformed guesswork on my part. Can anybody help?

Thanks.

[mrbnew]

It's your timing belt. It might look good on the top but if you take the bottom cover off you will see that the crank has stripped about 8 teeth off the belt. When you were driving and hearing the ticking noise you were probably running with 1 or 2 teeth missing and then finally ripped enough off to stop the engine and bend your valves.

Take it apart using the timing belt install guide you will find on this site.

[Turtle_Wax]

At 58k on the clock if it's never had a cambelt change the engine is living on borrowed time after 40,000 miles. A compression test should confirm it.

[skylark]

I know that I was pushing my luck a bit but the cam belt should have been changed at the 40k service. That being the case it still had 12000 miles to go but was nine months late in terms of time. I was intending to change it in another couple of months and was hoping I could get away with it but obviously not!

I must admit that I was hoping that it wasn't the timing belt. It did look as if all the teeth were in place from my limited view. However, following advice given here, I managed to get the power steering pump pulley off with a little help from the jack. This then allowed me to get the timing cover fully off.

The outer side of the belt was indeed intact but the inner side had about a half-inch area of damage. Clearly what had happened is that the belt had wandered off the pulleys and stripped the inner side of the belt. Oddly, the belt then seems to have wandered back onto the pulleys again. The belt must have stretched quite a lot because the pointer on the tensioner was all the way over beyond the pointer on the water pump body.

With the notch in the crank pulley lined up with the pin the intake and exhaust cam pulley notches were at 4 o'clock and 10 o'clock. I assume that they should be at 3 and 9 o'clock - pointing at each other horizontally. Just as an experiment I lined them up. The engine still won't start and I only get a very occasional backfire. I take this to mean that there is a problem with, possibly all, the inlet valves.

I am not sure that I am up to fixing this by myself without a workshop manual. Even then a new cam belt, head gasket set and up to 16 new valves would cost me a fair bit. To have a garage do it would probably add 4 hours labour. I would be probably be lucky to get £300 / $500 for the car if I did get it working again so it's probably uneconomic to repair.

This is a real shame as it is still a very good car and it is sad to see it go to an early grave.

Many thanks for the response. Very helpful.

[Turtle_Wax]

Nexia's are fetching very little money in the UK. You could probably get a good example with full service history off Ebay much cheaper than the labour costs a garage would charge to fix your engine. I had an old Nexia that had high mileage but still good condition and drove very well. I advertised it in the free ads paper and still nobody wanted it! In the end I drove it into the breakers and they gave me £25.

[skylark]

Used prices for these cars are ridiculously low. I knew that when I bought it at a ridiculously low price for a three year old car that had done less than 20K miles. So, for what I paid for it I can afford to write it off.

It just seems a shame. There's no real sign of rust and everything (except the engine and a leaky a/c system) works. It doesn't make sense that it is worthless and only fit for scrap but I guess we live in a throw-away society.

Even if I bought the parts on eBay (which you can) it would cost me over £100 in parts. I don't really have the experience to attempt a repair but I would have been tempted to at least take the head off and see what the damage is. Unfortunately, I don't really have any off-road space to play with it so I think it has got to go.

I have put the thing up on eBay as a non-runner. If anybody wants it they can have it. They probably won't want it. On the other hand the car it does have four pretty new tyres, a rebuilt alternator, rear exhaust sections only a few months old, radio, etc. that should be worth something..

Maybe I will just pull all the removable goodies out of it, put them on eBay, sell the tyres to a local dealer and then get the local authority to take the carcase away.

[Turtle_Wax]

Yes they are a good cheap run-around and surprisingly fast for a 1.5 engine, much faster than my 1.4 Lanos and also better on fuel. Like you say the parts alone would probably be more than what the car is worth. If you had the space it might be worth keeping an eye out for an accident damaged and do a complete engine swap. Otherwise see what you get for spares.

[skylark]

Interestingly this car did sell on eBay for £122 (about US$230). I think that's a fair price considering. Of course, out of that I have to pay eBay £15 for use of their wonderful facilities.

During the auction I had an email from another eBay member offering me a working engine and gearbox. I wouldn't fancy swapping the whole thing but I wondered if swapping the head with the valves intact would be easier than disassembling the thing and grinding in new valves and then reassembling it. It would still need new gaskets, timing belt, and perhaps water pump.

Still, it's sold now. Time to let go!

[Turtle_Wax]

I saw the ebay ad and it was very impressive. I bet you can also sell ice cubes to an Eskimo Has he picked up the car yet as I wonder if he actually realises it is a non runner. I know you stated that in the ad but from my own experience with ebay some people can be very stupid

[skylark]

I thought it might be you bidding!

To be honest I thought it was more a case of selling four tyres with a free car but the guy who bought it says he's going to put it back on the road. He collected it tonight.

It's nice to know that it will ride again.