Ford Fiests 1.8D crankshaft timing

 Not having had anything much to do with the Ford 1.8D engine, & not having the Haynes book until recently, it was not clear how the crankshaft location was achieved when setting up the engine to replace the belts.

After the pump drive belt snapped & the cambelt tensioner destroyed itself, the general feeling among those we spoke to was that the engine was damaged, however it didn't seem as it that was the case as everything was rotating smoothly...

A Mondeo engine came up on ebay cheap & local which we bought with a view to swapping them over, however, the amount of work involved in doing that prompted a re-think!

In order to find out how the crankshaft is set to TDC we removed the sump from the spare engine & turned it on its side... everything then became clear..... There's a flat on the web of the crank of #1 piston, the timing pin is of such a length that when it is screwed into its hole in the block & the crankshaft rotated the flat on the web contats the end of the pin when TDC os reached...

We didnt have the Ford pin & consequently didn't know the length it needed to be (or any facilities to machine on up immediately) so some thinking was called for...

As far as we could tell the Mondeo engine was still timed, so we pinned the camshaft & made a timing pin from a length of M10 studding & three nuts. One nut was drilled out so it acted as a spacer to ensure that the setting was referenced to the machined area around the hole rather than the "as cast" surface of the block. The stud was screwed into the hole until the end touched the flat on the crank web, the two nuts were then locked against eachother & the whole thin removed & inserted into the Fiesta block in the car. As the crank was rotated (clockwise) by putting the car in gear & rotating the wheel we felt it contact the end of the stud...

The pump & camshaft were then lined up & pinned with M6 bolts & the belts & tensioners replaced...

Fiesta 1.8D '95

A tricky one this... the 1.8 Ford diesel has two toothed belts, the belt that drives the injector pump snapped a few months ago. At the same time the tensioner for the cam drive belt broke up (plastic!... I ask you?!) this left the belt slacker than it should have been (it was the plastic "tyre" round the tensioner bearing that actually destroyed itself) but I don't think it was slack enough to have jumped a tooth.

So, the remedy would seem simple... find the timing points, insert pins to lock crankshaft & camshaft, remove tensioner, belt etc, time injector pump, replace pumpo drive belt, replace cam belt... turn engine by hand to check all is well.... then start engine!

If only...

The problem is Fords way of locking the crankshaft, there is a well hidden hole in the block, accessable via a hole in the injector pump mounting bracket, through which the timing pin is inserted, after its plug is removed

This is the difficult bit as it's far from obvious when the crankshaft is in the right place!

We did this all outside in November, but when it was all back together, we thurned the engine by hand only to find it lock up tight... so obviously we got something wrong.... in the meantime another engine came up on ebay locally at £30 it was pretty much scrap value.... this one was from a Mondeo & had a turbo but it's more or less the same engine.

The plan was to swap them over, but having investigated the amount of work involved, current thinking is to investigate, on this engine, how to time the crank & then try again with the other engine...