So my dad calls me Tuesday and says the cars broken down, RAC guy says its dead basically not worth repairing (mk3 astra)

So I took a look today as I was over for mothers day.

Broke out the spanners and:

Thars your problem!

Snapped cambelt so off with the head:



Tiny pistons on the 1.6





Managed to bend 12 of the 16 valves!

Bought a head off ebay so next weekend 'we can rebuild it'!

Nice. I'm dreading the day mine goes bang but I'm too cheap to do the pre-emptive fix. My old banger is expendable but so far its refusing to die, it's like it thinks its an 80s action movie hero.

/ Have been out bleeding brakes today - had a new master cylinder fitted a few weeks ago by someone and the pedal was hitting the floor and the car wasn't stopping 

I wish I had the knowledge, tools and the balls to do stuff like this for myself, but I don't and I'm too scared something like the above will happen when I'm doing 80 on the motorway and find I can't brake all of a sudden 'cos I fitted new pads/discs/calipers wrong

Seen that many times, sh*t them 16 valves were, I've still got my 8 valve astra great engine without the extra valves.

my dad used to own a mk2 astra back a few years now, it snapped the cambelt, threw a new belt on good as new, good ol non interference engines.

Quote from: Binary Shadow on March 31, 2014, 18:44:21 PM
my dad used to own a mk2 astra back a few years now, it snapped the cambelt, threw a new belt on good as new, good ol non interference engines.

I had an 88 Cavalier, put piston through the block, the engine emptied itself all over the road and i still managed to drive all the way home.

Shocking how good those old crap engines were

Took me a day and a half this weekend but got the car back together and its all running perfectly  pretty chuffed with that.