Timing Belt Change On My New ( J Reg ) Emina

[weewelshyboy]

Hello all ! I am desperately trying to find the best mechanic to fit a new timing belt/cambelt on my newly aquired Emina.My family absolutely adore her ( she is a 1993 J reg ) and is beautiful.We have just had our 4th child,and I wanted an Emina in particular,but realise that they need a lot of love.She has only covered around 49,000 miles from new,but,I intend to keep her for a few years,and would like to get off to a good start.My second youngest child ( my beloved daughter ),has Cystic Fibrosis,and it is extremely important to us that our car is reliable as much as we can make it.Any help would be great.Thank you for taking the time to read this.Kindest regards to all.

[propnut]

You need to join one or both of these forums

www.estima-motoring.co.uk

www.estimaowners.com

Here you will get your best advice. The problem with the imports is that if you can't work on them yourself you are limited to a few (some very good) privateers. You should be aware that these cars have an inherent issue with their cylinder heads cracking. You need to constantly keep an eye on your temp gauge. Irrespective of what others might tell you there is 100% NOTHING you can do to prevent this. The best you can hope for is that you detect it overheating before the heat damages the rest of the engine. If and when the head cracks you are looking at around +- £1500 to £2000 to get it repaired.

Signs are

Car starts using coolant

You start seeing white smoke/steam coming from your exhaust

The oil on your dipstick starts to take on a milky appearance

The temp gauge starts going higher than it did before

Your heater stops blowing hot air.

You are wise to have the belt changed as if this breaks you are looking at the same sum to have it repaired.

[weewelshyboy]

You need to join one or both of these forums

www.estima-motoring.co.uk

www.estimaowners.com

Here you will get your best advice. The problem with the imports is that if you can't work on them yourself you are limited to a few (some very good) privateers. You should be aware that these cars have an inherent issue with their cylinder heads cracking. You need to constantly keep an eye on your temp gauge. Irrespective of what others might tell you there is 100% NOTHING you can do to prevent this. The best you can hope for is that you detect it overheating before the heat damages the rest of the engine. If and when the head cracks you are looking at around +- £1500 to £2000 to get it repaired.

Signs are

Car starts using coolant

You start seeing white smoke/steam coming from your exhaust

The oil on your dipstick starts to take on a milky appearance

The temp gauge starts going higher than it did before

Your heater stops blowing hot air.

You are wise to have the belt changed as if this breaks you are looking at the same sum to have it repaired.

Thank you very much for your help...it is much appreciated.Is there a particular sort of mileage that the head cracks?

[propnut]

Well that really depends on whether or not you believe that the mileage on your car is genuine, irrespective of whatever "certificate" you have been given as proof. The thing to understand is that the engine fitted to your car was not originally designed for it. It comes from front engine mounted cars such as the Picnic, Corolla and Camry's. Now the interesting thing here is that this head doesn't seem to crack anywhere nearly as regularly in these cars and this no doubt is largely due to the better cooling as it has become widely accepted that heat is probably the biggest factor involved here.

Your car has the engine mounted under the drivers seat where it does not have anything like the ancillary cooling via airflow around it as a front mounted engine has. The fact that this is heat related is further correlated by the fact that typically the head starts to crack at cylinder number 4 and move forward to one. Obviously number 4 is the hottest being the furthest away from what little airflow there is. Toyota has tried to work around this problem by using a modified head gasket that channels more coolant to the rear of the engine to compensate. Now it would appear that the cherry on the top of this cake starts to make its presence felt when the water channels in the head, gasket and block begin to clog up due to mineral deposition and rust. This degrades the cooling efficiency and as such the overall operating temperature is raised

This raises another interesting point, these cars are supposed to have such low mileage and so how come their water ways are clogging up to a degree more synonymous with a high mileage car?

So I am afraid there is no simple answer to this and in fact I have had this debate with others who have sworn blind that it is down to driving style, flushing of radiators, type of coolant etc etc and then the very same people who have been following their own advice have suffered cracked heads. I fear that there is no way you can stop the ineveitable but there is merit in some of their ideas in as much as you may be able to postpone it by.

1. Having your cooling system thoroughly flushed with a proper decalcifying agent

2. Replacing your radiator with a brand new one +- £70 from eBay

3. Making sure your fan is operating correctly

4. Ensuring their is no blockage of the airflow at the front of the car.

A lot of people have a lot of opinions and yet none can answer WHY the same engine in other cars does NOT suffer the same failure when all other components are the same. The ONLY differences are the placement of the engine and the load placed upon it. Asking a 2.2TD that comes out of a 1.5 tonne car to lug around a 2.5 tonne car is going to cause it to work harder than it was originally designed to, hard work = more heat.

No doubt by now you will have realised that these cars are not so great on fuel as I am sure you were lead to believe, in fact there is not a huge difference between their consumption and that of the Petrol powered Previa's. This is again down to the power to weight ratio, weak engine pulling heavy car = more fuel used. The difference is that the Previa petrol engine is immensely reliable and whilst it does suffer from blown head gasket normally only does so after a genuine high mileage has been covered and this is true of any car. The advantage you have is the ability to run your car on cooking oil, so if you fancy offering to take all your local chippies used oil away for free and if you filter it properly you can save yourself some running costs, albeit you will have all the neighbourhood cats following you in search of fish :D

Best of luck.