Citroen/Fiat/Peugeot cambelt wizard

Photo by markuso courtesy of freedigitalphotos.netThis is a totally shameless plug for someone who is saving me lots of money.

It is also a bit of a warning for the lucky (ha!!) owners of similar cars to my Citroen C8 2.2 turbo diesel.

REPLACE THE CAM BELT AT 50,000 MILES, or your car may have to visit my new friend Gavin at http://www.c8centre.co.uk/

Mine went when I was on the way to the airport to pick up Boss + Brood, and there was a sense of power (and humour!) failure.  Slightly disorganising the dance that goes on underneath the bonnet.

Pistons, meet valves…. valves meet pistons….hmmm

I’m slightly kicking myself for not having the repair done earlier (my Peugeot 205 went at about 50K many years ago, so I should have ignored the Citroen fiction about replacing it at 100K)

OTHERWISE IT COULD BE VERY EXPENSIVE part of the problem, while the C8 is a great way to waft around in comfort, it does not have a bonnet, it has a large letter-box.  So when the cambelt goes, its not just a question of whip up the bonnet and get out the wrench.  It is more than 10 hours if you want to get the motor out (dropped out underneath the car, in case you are wondering!).

So anyway back to my (new and best) friend Gavin.

He’s based in Edinburgh, and has invented a clever and slightly secret way of repairing the damage, without resorting to recon engine insertion (that’s getting north of £6K), and offers a pretty clear set of tariffs, so that one is not feeling that one is slowly being bled dry by a series of bad news bulletins, which clock up the maintenance hours.

So your choices are:

1) Replace cam belt at 50K

2) Have your car visit Gavin (saving yourself several thousand pounds over less specialist garages)

3) Spend £3-6K educating your local garage on some of the joys of replacing broken bits of Citroen Engine, in increasingly awkward parts of the engine.

…oh did I mention that there is a problem “design feature”  in the engine which means that injectors get an unhealthy shower when it rains so they are highly corroded.

Anyway I wish Gavin well with his specialist business(that’s http://www.c8centre.co.uk/), which will probably solve quite a few cars from being scrapped before their time, thereby saving the planet a bit.

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