Good evening all, Been having a few issues with the Meg of late and the latest one is a squeal from what sounds like a belt. It only happens when it's cold and at present its quite faint. Probably a dozy question but is there anyway to tell if a cambelt has been changed without pulling the bastard apart? The chap that I bought the car from insisted that he did the cambelt while it was in his posession but he didn't provide a receipt for the labour, just the parts... I do still love the car but the unreliability of it had me very close to buying myself M3 the other day. Please can someone reinstall a bit of faith and give me some ideas?? Addz
From my unfortunate experience, the squealy belt when cold turned out to be the auxilary belt which snapped mid journey & seized the air con pump! I've never been able to tell by looking at belts, the snapped aux belt looked fine to me apart from the snapped line! Ha I had no reassurance when I bought my 225 about servicing so got the belts done asap for peace of mind. (2&half years later the aux snapped anyway) This isn't the most unreliable car I've owned, but, when things need doing you can be sure it will cost a bomb!
Mine's always made a squealing type noise from cold as well. It lasts a couple of minutes before going. My 172 did the same, and it didn't stop when I changed the belts.
Really, the best option is to have it looked at by someone that knows these cars extremely well... throwing money isn't fun at anytime but throwing it at someone and getting nothing but guesses is even worse. It could be something on the Aux belt run (possibly even the tensioner itself) or maybe something on the timing belt run (water pump for example). The Aux run is easy enough to check and whipping it off to check the ancils and putting it back again is an hours work AT MOST so shouldn't be expensive. We charge £40+VAT an hour so it doesn't have to be expensive owning these cars but it does seem that anything with a Diamond on the front is feared or misunderstood by *most* garages. Mick
Thanks for the advice chaps, and sorry for the delayed response. I'm gonna take MicKPM's advice and get someone to have a closer look. My faith in her was restored the other day when I took apart a Scirocco R, biggest grin on my face ever since!
