Kia Pride Cam Belt

[jadesnewcar]

Having just bought a 97 Kia Pride 1.3i for my daughter, I want to make sure it's in a sound condition before I hand it over. As it's 10 years old and got 46,000 miles on the clock, one of the jobs I have earmarked to do is replace the cam belt; but I haven't found any technical manuals for this model, the closest being an Australian Haynes-type manual on Amazon for the Kia/Mazda/Festiva etc.

Can anyone help me with the finer points of a cam belt change? I have done a couple of these before on Citroen and Peugeot diesels, so all I really need to know is whether special tools are required? Or does the camshaft lock with some standard bolts through the cam wheel into the head a la Peugeot before removing the belt? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[hanzel371]

no special tools are needed to change the cam belt ( in our country it's called the timing belt). your standard hatchet wrench set will do fine. The camshaft of the 97 kia pride is pretty basic.,

1) remove the air filter assembly
2) remove the belts (aircon compressor and alternator)
3) i dont remember if there was a tensioner in the assembly - if there is one, you might have to loosen it., if there is none - you might have to remove the camshaft wheel that turns the cam belt to have the belt removed.
4) install the new cam belt and make sure that the engine's main cam shaft remains immobile while removing the old and installing the new cam belt.
5) reattach everything
6) make sure that the engine's timing is properly set as you might have to adjust it a little bit for proper combustion

and there you have it, new cam belt installed.

[jadesnewcar]

Thanks for the advice Hanzel! I had a quick look earlier in the week and it seemed simple enough after the belt cover was removed, so I carried on and did it. The tensioner wheel is spring-loaded, so it was a simple job of loosening the centre bolt, levering it away from the belt, and retightening it. The belt was still a bit tight but the old one came off OK and the new one went on fine. Loosen the bolt on the tensioner wheel again and it springs back into position.

The only problem I had was the usual hassle of undoing the crank pulley bolt, which was only really accessible when I had removed the engine mounting and inner wing splash shield, and lowered the engine unit below the edge of the inner wing. The I found that just putting the car in gear with the brakes on wouldn't give me enough resistance to crack the pulley bolt undone, so I tried an old trick that I used ages ago: remove no.1 spark plug, turn the engine just past tdc on the firing stroke, feed in some hard rubber cable, and rotate the engine backwards so the piston compresses the rubber cable against the head and locks it up completely. Obviously this has to be done quite carefully, and it's vital it's on the firing stroke (I checked the rotor position in the distributor) or it could bend the valves if it was on the exhaust/intake stroke.

Runs perfectly after the work, so I guess the timing must be pretty much OK!

[hanzel371]

nice to know that you cahnged the cam belt. wow! you're the real expert here he he. i just watched closely how the mechanic changed the cam belt but never really tried changing it myself.