Removing starter motor on TD5 auto, replacing contacts, etc

Stanleysteamer said:

(I must make sure I keep hold of this thread!)
I would imagine I would do this anyway, as if changing a cam belt, although I wouldn't be doing this, as of course it is a chain anyway!
Does anything need packing with petroleum jelly or anything? As I have had this problem before.

Click to expand...

Oooh matron......
Can do if you like, but the engine will be fine

Stanleysteamer said:

(I must make sure I keep hold of this thread!)
I would imagine I would do this anyway, as if changing a cam belt, although I wouldn't be doing this, as of course it is a chain anyway!
Does anything need packing with petroleum jelly or anything? As I have had this problem before.

Click to expand...

no vaseline, its vital as its very difficult to align the cam and crank after heads back on if they arent pinned and set previous and head goes back on with both aligned,you leave pins in till head is torqued, cam sprocket is fitted with loose bolts, guide re-secured and tensioner refiited,you can the apply loctite and tighten the 3 bolts one at a time so as sprocket cant get displaced from its shallow spigot

jamesmartin said:

no vaseline, its vital as its very difficult to align the cam and crank after heads back on if they arent pinned and set previous and head goes back on with both aligned,you leave pins in till head is torqued, cam sprocket is fitted with loose bolts, guide re-secured and tensioner refiited,you can the apply loctite and tighten the 3 bolts one at a time so as sprocket cant get displaced from its shallow spigot

Click to expand...

I agree with that.
I didn't pin mine during re assembly and it's a pig of a job getting them aligned.

jamesmartin said:

no vaseline, its vital as its very difficult to align the cam and crank after heads back on if they arent pinned and set previous and head goes back on with both aligned,you leave pins in till head is torqued, cam sprocket is fitted with loose bolts, guide re-secured and tensioner refiited,you can the apply loctite and tighten the 3 bolts one at a time so as sprocket cant get displaced from its shallow spigot

Click to expand...

I can imagine this being a pig if you don't pin it all. I imagine it is because the springs push the lobes on the camshaft out of position and moving it back to line up with the camshaft sprocket being difficult. The Dolomite Sprint camshaft had flats on it purposely put there so you could use a spanner to turn it to line everything up. Which was good. but not so good was you also needed to vaseline up the tensioner if you had disturbed it, and this wasn't in any manual. Which is why I asked you.
Thanks again for your continuing input!

jamesmartin said:

new bolts arent that dear, so not a big issue if your doing a head gasket ,but it is perfectly acceptable to reuse bolts at least a second time barring any has yielded but that is possible to tell by length, ,ive never seen a failure due to reused bolts, im not advocating any must use new or used but i dont want people to feel wrong about reusing bolts it is perfectly acceptable

Click to expand...

Maybe you'll get away with it on a cylinder head but there are instances when re-using a torque-to-yield bolt can cost you dearly. I remember a friend of mine replacing the timing belt on a Duratec engine. The crankshaft and crank pulley on these engines are not keyed and the timing sprocket is held in place with diamond rings, compressed between the pulley and the crank with a grade 8.8 stretch bolt. He decided to use the original bolt as it looked OK and was only tightened to something like 40Nm + 45°. And that was the end of it - it's an interference engine and once under load, the bolt gave way and the cams stopped turning !

NPG said:

Maybe you'll get away with it on a cylinder head but there are instances when re-using a torque-to-yield bolt can cost you dearly. I remember a friend of mine replacing the timing belt on a Duratec engine. The crankshaft and crank pulley on these engines are not keyed and the timing sprocket is held in place with diamond rings, compressed between the pulley and the crank with a grade 8.8 stretch bolt. He decided to use the original bolt as it looked OK and was only tightened to something like 40Nm + 45°. And that was the end of it - it's an interference engine and once under load, the bolt gave way and the cams stopped turning !

Click to expand...

key ways are rare nowadays theres no key on a td5 cam,just friction,there might be more to that story id think, i advise on what ive had great experience with its not based on guess work

Stanleysteamer said:

I can imagine this being a pig if you don't pin it all. I imagine it is because the springs push the lobes on the camshaft out of position and moving it back to line up with the camshaft sprocket being difficult. The Dolomite Sprint camshaft had flats on it purposely put there so you could use a spanner to turn it to line everything up. Which was good. but not so good was you also needed to vaseline up the tensioner if you had disturbed it, and this wasn't in any manual. Which is why I asked you.
Thanks again for your continuing input!

Click to expand...

tensioner is pump fed so no vaseline,you cant easily adjust the chain on the sprocket to time the cam once heads back on

jamesmartin said:

there might be more to that story id think

Click to expand...

Unfortunately no James - it was really that simple. He was using my garage and I was there and remember telling him that Ford insists on a new bolt. He shrugged it off, saying that the torque is not that high for a grade 8 bolt and seeing that the bolt did not show any deformity whatsoever, I was convinced he was right. But then something like that happens and your entire philosophy changes with it. So when I did the flywheel on the TD5, I put in new bolts because LR said so ! Yet, I know what you mean and did come across several others working on Japanese cars who never replace the head bolts in spite of them being torque-to-yield.

NPG said:

Unfortunately no James - it was really that simple. He was using my garage and I was there and remember telling him that Ford insists on a new bolt. He shrugged it off, saying that the torque is not that high for a grade 8 bolt and seeing that the bolt did not show any deformity whatsoever, I was convinced he was right. But then something like that happens and your entire philosophy changes with it. So when I did the flywheel on the TD5, I put in new bolts because LR said so ! Yet, I know what you mean and did come across several others working on Japanese cars who never replace the head bolts in spite of them being torque-to-yield.

Click to expand...

40 nm then 45 degrees is quite a high torque also on shallow spigots it has to be fitted square as ive found out,but yes specific instances do happen ,like if you use lr torque setting for oil squirt bolts in 4 cylinder blocks they are likely to snap, that doesnt ruin a whole philosophy,experience tells you whats ok to do ,td5 flywheel bolts arent a risk at all

jamesmartin said:

40 nm then 45 degrees is quite a high torque also on shallow spigots it has to be fitted square as ive found out,but yes specific instances do happen ,like if you use lr torque setting for oil squirt bolts in 4 cylinder blocks they are likely to snap, that doesnt ruin a whole philosophy,experience tells you whats ok to do ,td5 flywheel bolts arent a risk at all

Click to expand...

Well, the thing is that unless one has the benefit of your field experience, it's not easy to make these kind of judgement calls. As a DIY mechanic who only works on his motors, I rely mostly on official literature to get the job done and any deviations on matters such as these are hard to entertain unless you've done them before with repeated success. Someone once said "Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing" and I suppose this is what separates professionals from amateur mechanics like myself.

I think this is why I go on this forum so much. Being an amateur mechanic, I have a lot of experience on certain cars and next to none on others. I am also aware that by doing my own work I save so much on labour that I can afford to buy the best stuff to go on the vehicle.
But that can go wrong if you make a stupid mistake.
Years ago I was doing the tappets on an old Cortina Mk1. Job I had done many times on many cars. Once I'd finished the job, I started it to see how it sounded. A spanner flew up the back of the rad and buried itself in the top tank.
I'd forgotten to take it off the crankshaft pulley bolt where I had been using it to turn the engine over while doing the tappets. The engine started, the spanner undid the crankshaft pulley bolt then flew upwards. If it had not been keyed it'd have ruined the engine. So I had to get the rad mended which rather offset the money saved by tuning my own engine!
Experience can be a hard taskmaster!
Before we had forums, (before we had the internet), I was lucky to have a neighbour who ran a garage from the back of his house. I used to help him out from time to time and he taught me a lot. He also let me borrow any tool I wanted and even his garage when he went away. He moved away in about 1990 and I then moved house. Cars have changed a lot since then! So I view peeps on the forums as being like him. Sure, not all advice is perfect but with a bit of experience I think we can all learn from the more experienced people on here and even sometimes be able to contribute a bit ourselves as we learn. So the specialists don't have to pull all the weight all the time!
Back when I worked, I could spot a mistake in a bit of written or spoken French in a nanosecond, that less experienced staff couldn't see. Ditto in UCAS application forms and personal statements. It is all just experience that comes with time and familiarity. Getting others to see it sometimes took a while, but they got there in the end and I taught quite a few who became teachers themselves. No use in car mechanics, but there you go!
And no, I do not go on French teaching forums! I don't know if they even exist! Far too boring! So I take my hat off to those experienced peeps who come on here and are so patient with the likes of myself! But at least I did write the book on how to get into top unis from an ordinary State school, so perhaps doing that has put a bit back into the world.
Sorry for posting so long!