E30 Zone

Hi all.
Hoping you can help. Was driving down my road the other day and she just stopped working.

The car was still able to turn over and there was a spark.
Took it to a local garage who said that they think that the cam belt has broken. They advised that there was no compression on three of the four cylinders.

As a rough estimate they quoted £700, does this seem reasonable? Is there anything else that could have gone wrong?
Have I got any other options??

Thanks in advance for the help
Tom

With a broken cam belt, it will 'turn over', but must faster and more easily than normal.
Where did you check for a spark? With a broken cam belt, the odds are against you getting a spark at a spark plug, and if you do pick the right plug, it should spark twice per turn of the crankshaft, instead of once every two turns.
You haven't actually said what engine you have, but if its four pots and has (had) a cambelt, then it's likely that it's a M40. These engines don't have much value, so the best option would either to do a complete head swap (fairly easy DIY), or a complete engine swap (still easy DIY, but needs a bit more equipment and space).

Hi Brian, thanks for the quick reply. I checked for a spark by. Taking one of the HT leads off and putting a spark plug on the end. I have the M40 engine with about 86k on the clock. I will have a read of the excellent wiki on here to see if there is anything about swapping the head. I must say that this website is a great help!

I have a head here with the valves in if you decide to repair

tom455732 wrote:Hi Brian, thanks for the quick reply. I checked for a spark by. Taking one of the HT leads off and putting a spark plug on the end.

If the cam belt is broken, the distributor doesn't turn, so all the sparks end up going to just one plug - the one where the rotor arm was randomly pointing to when the camshaft came to rest.
Can you remember if the engine turned over much faster than normal, and how often the plug sparked?

Thanks so much for the help so far guys.
Can't remember what the situation was with the spark plug so will try to investigate at the garage next week.

Will let you know on the valves

And keep you all posted

Thanks again
Tom

If you're getting a spark then chances are the belt may have just jumped a tooth, but unfortunately the pistions would have put the valves into early retirement seeing as you're not getting compression on 3 of the cylinders.

Minimum case - new valves/head (depending on damage)
Worst case - new engine.

My M40 engine (92k) complete with gearbox is due to be relieved of its duty soon out of my 1991 318i to make way for an M20 lump, so if it is worst case then let me know you can have the whole package. For an agreed sum of course ☺ï¸a

With decent condition M20's going for <£300, seems rude to spend any money on a 1.8...

or go M52!

Bits breaking is the perfect excuse to upgrade