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Just thought of this. If the marks on the cam gears while the engine is at tdc wouldn't that suggest the chain has not stretched? in the same thought process if it stretches the chain will be longer, suggesting the marks would not align. Anyone?
Hmm, this might be something interesting to note. I purchased the IWIS chain, mb tensioner, plug and valve cover gasket.
I plan on tackling this in the next week or two with my brother and father. The only took I am really interested is in the chain press since I don't know how to do it and can't construct a tool for this. I am thinking of calling a couple of indys I have a relationship with and maybe they can loan me their tool for a price.
I remember there being someone on peach parts that had tools that he would loan, can someone guide me in the right direction as to what I could buy that isn't the MB tool because thats just too much money.
Just got some new's that might come to answer many questions as to why this might be happening.
I spent about an hour today at the dealer picking up the tensioner, valve cover seal and the tensioner seal. I asked to take a look at the original Mercedes Benz timing chain and I looked at it and took pictures to compare it to my IWIS once it comes in. While speaking to the parts technician he specified that the chain had been replaced with a different part number from what the car came with. I thought, weird because the other two mb parts department in my are have both denied there ever being part number that preceded the current one. Sure enough this parts rep showed me the screen and even gave me the part number of the old one.
This was the timing chain that came with our cars apparently 0049972494.
the last time i was at the dealer i was told the chain p/n has not been changed but however the tensioner p/n revisions have been changed few time since (by the way my car year is 2005) which leads me to thinking that the tensioner is weak defective design
the last time i was at the dealer i was told the chain p/n has not been changed but however the tensioner p/n revisions have been changed few time since (by the way my car year is 2005) which leads me to thinking that the tensioner is weak defective design
The tensioner also changed, but so has the timing chain. For some apparent reason it's hard to find on epc. But I confirmed with ecs tuning and mb of Miami. There is a member here that mentioned he bought the chain and was confused because it appeared different than the original one. Looking at hoggers chain that went on it is different than the one that comes out. Which points that at one point there was a design change, maybe insinuating that it wasn't a manufacturing defect to blame for chain stretch.
hi. sorry for my english but im from Poland. in try to change chain on mercedes c180 kompressor. when i try to set crankshaft pulley on O/T point the marks on camshafts are not on the arrows on head cover. its chain can skip couple tooths? I need to set all marks on points before i but new chain?
I have just joined the unfortunate list of current class owners who's timing chain has gone ffs.just waiting to hear if engine has been damaged at which point it would be RIP. shame because the car is in mint condition and before this drives like new. Only had the car 4 months and got it serviced day before this happened which I now find out is very common. Wish I spent a hour or 2 researching this model when i bought the dam car as the first thing that comes up when u enter "common faults with c class's" is TIMING CHAIN PROBLEMS. C class C180k SE 06 98000. No warning no weird noises just went to start car and nothing just a spinning noise. I hope I have not bent valves etc but I fear from the story's I have read i have about a 20% chance I've not done damage to the engine and I don't feel lucky at this point.
This car has just over 120 000KM on it, after buying it I immediately had a new timing chain, aftermarket CAM intake and outlet adjuster gears and chain tensioner fitted. The cold start noise has never changed, if anyone could help me identify the cause and remedy to fix it I would by most grateful. From what I know, after fitting a new chain, the car should be good for at-least another 100 000KM.
2005 c200 kompressor with kleemann header and some other mods.
I've owned this car since New and always serviced it with Mobil oil... I daily drove it until 2015 when I parked it
Now I'm bringing it back to life. It has a bad miss fire at idle that clears up under throttle. Originally it was under powered but I recently rebuilt the vacuum pump, replaced a torn egr hose, replaced some cam sensor gaskets that were leaking oil and cleaned the harnesses
The idle cleaned up a bit, especially under breaking (most likely due to the old oil filled vacuum pump) but it still misfires.
Today I ran the OBD2 scanner and came up with p2054 and p201b which the forums say is the lovely chain issue.
I ordered a compression tester to check the damage since I've had this problem since 2015 and I have redlines this car multiple times while this "miss fire" was present...
It starts on the first crank and still has full power some I'm hoping this will end up being a chain job and not much more... I'll keep you posted
All 4 cylinders have between 9. 5 and 10 bar compression which is within 5% of each other, above the service limit of 140psi... This is on a dead dry engine that hasn't run in 3 weeks...so the expert mechanic that told me to junk it and that it had probably already bent valves was wrong...
Now on to the timing, my intake cam is off by one sproke... My chain is reeeeeeally tight, I can pull with all my strength and barely lift it 1mm, and the cam gear tooth look perfect...
Some history on this engine...
5 years ago at 96000KMS (less than 60k miles) it overheated on a date night with my wife... I checked the oil cap and found a foam under it... I thought it was a head gasket and towed it to a shop I used to deal with that did quick service... He referred me to his cousin that does internal work...
Cousin looked at it and said it was the coolant kneck that runs through the timing cover... This is my first German car so I thought he was lying.. I had never heard of a (Japanese) car with any coolant passages anywhere near the timing cover...
After much research and him convincing me I paid him $1500 to take apart, clean, and reseal the engine... I can't remember for the life of me if that work included new timing chain and gears or not
Long story short... Car came out of his shop with all sorts of miss fires and timing codes... Sent me back to his cousin to change coils, cam magnets.. Etc
I'm now almost 100% convinced either the guy mistimed the engine on reassembly or reused the old tensioner which had been damaged by the foam, coolant oil, mixture allowing it to jump on first start and then hold once oil pressure buitl on the engine...
He probably knew it too and shoveled me off to his cousin to get more money out of me...
I'm heavily leaning now towards a tensioner replacement and re timing the existing chain if there is enough slack with the tensioner out to do that... I don't think this is a stretched chain... Car is only at 120,000kms and I've owned it since 2004 with either original MB oil, Mobil 1 or Castrol syntec for its entire life...
Will keep you posted... Now I need to track down what happened to that tensioner I ordered from alibaba... Got lost in quarantine it seems...
Took off the supercharger silencer to get access to the crank pulley... Goal was to remove the chain tensioner, adjust the intake cam gear, and reset the tensioner...
To my surprise the crank pulley was somewhere around 45* with the cam gears at 0* and one tooth off respectively... When I move the crank pulley to top, the cams are way off their marks...
With the top and bottom timing marks that far off, while the car still runs great, has compression within limits and doesn't bind when manually rotating the engine I think its certain my balancer has spun...
My chain is super tight through over 6 full rotations, all cam gear teeth are there and look healthy...
So I feel like the keep it simple repair here is a new crank pulley and adjusting whichever cam gear is off by 1 tooth
My problem now is how do I get the crank pulley off... I've done this one before on a 3000gt vr4... We used a ghetto method of wedging a socket with a steel extension on the handle against the frame and bumping the starter until the starter torque broke the crank pulley off...
I was 15 years more reckless back then and I'm not sure I have the strength or the tools to take off a crank pulley...
Appreciate any advice here... Is there a way to time this engine without replacing the spun crank pulley?
I have 3 options now...
Retime the cam gears with some way of referencing tdc
Do the full job on the crank and cam gears
Junk the car
In Saudi, I can't sell a car with expired registration and I can't pass registration and emissions with a cam timing off and a misfiring idle...
Here's the new reference... When the cams are at 0* they are actually some 15* off TDC... Something tells me the pulley was spun before the mechanic timed it.... So what he thought was 0 was not... And that's how he gave it back to me out of timing thinking it was a miss fire issue...
Now things are starting to make sense...
After I got it back from him it broke two AC clutches... They thought my supercharger was binding and we replaced it... It's clear now the pulley was spinning and catching... Very strange failure... Now two options... Used pulley from the junkyard or overdrive unit if I can find one cheap enough... Hrmm... Fix and sell or keep and mod... The age old addiction...
New pulley and tensioner locally were $1,000 . Ordered them from ebay UK for around $200 ... with COVID-19 was a bit of a hassle to get things in but finally got them.
Yesterday morning I jumped back on the project, removed the Alternator without lifting the car (Pain in knuckles but possible).
I punched out the tensioner cover
Removed the old tensioner ... which looked fine, but the spring definitely felt softer and easier to depress than the new one.
Ended up taking the front cam magnets off.
Spent about an hour moving the crank pulley between -15* BTDC and +15*BTDC to get enough slack around both intake and exhaust cam gears.
Used a 27MM socket on the camshaft gear (behind the magnet) and after several tries of moving the chain slack around and rotating the gears I was finally able to reset the timing.
Installed the new tensioner back in
Rotated the engine once in full rotation and all timing marks are back to 0
Later this week I'll button it all back up. But we should be good to go now : )
Thanks for all the tips in this thread. There was also a great video on youtube on how to remove the alternator that helped me a lot.
I didn't take pictures this time because I banged right through it. But just goes to show it is possible (yet difficult to be honest) to reset the timing without the cam gear lock, and without breaking the chain.
Granted my car is unique, the mechanic that worked on it after the thermostat housing failure mis-set the timing to start with. So I didnt replace any gears (all tooth looked great) and my chain once retensioned has 0 slack in it.
Wow! It's been a while, but I'm back.
I little history on the car. In 2015 I drive it from Washington to Texas for work relocation. Drove it in Texas for maybe 6 months before I sold it. Never had any issues with the timing chain, or engine. Although, I think the car may be in the bottom of a lake somewhere. Turns out, the person I sold it to didn't register it, and shot someone in the car. The police found a piece of the broken glass that had code/ID on it, and used those numbers to trace it back to me. Fortunately I still had proof of the sale, and showed that I had reported the sale to the state. I was able to help DPS in the investigation, but not sure what the outcome was.
It was a great car. If anyone has any questions about the timing chain job, I can try to answer as best I can.
Wow! It's been a while, but I'm back.
I little history on the car. In 2015 I drive it from Washington to Texas for work relocation. Drove it in Texas for maybe 6 months before I sold it. Never had any issues with the timing chain, or engine. Although, I think the car may be in the bottom of a lake somewhere. Turns out, the person I sold it to didn't register it, and shot someone in the car. The police found a piece of the broken glass that had code/ID on it, and used those numbers to trace it back to me. Fortunately I still had proof of the sale, and showed that I had reported the sale to the state. I was able to help DPS in the investigation, but not sure what the outcome was.
It was a great car. If anyone has any questions about the timing chain job, I can try to answer as best I can.
Wow, that's crazy. I always wondered what happened to my 2005 C230 as well. I google the VIN now and again just for fun. It had 146,500 miles the last time I drove it on 9/22/2012. So I doubt it is still on the road.
It has been a while! i remember well your adventure with changing your timing chain and it's interesting that after you sold your car, the story went on! I'm glad you didn't get caught up in that!
I now have two 2005 C230s (mine and my daughter's). Mine has 120K miles on it and the timing chain seems good. I took the cam cover off a few thousand miles ago and it was tight - at least between the cams. It does have a short period of a muffled noise when it starts up that I don't think is the timing chain - at least I hope not. My daughter's is completely silent.
Mine has made a sound, lifters, since day one (I’ve had it since 5 miles)...goes away quickly.
I plan to change the chain this summer - obviously if it’s perfect/good, it’ll stay until I hear something different. Always start with COMAND and HVAC off...
Oil has been changed almost every 5k or earlier with approved Mobil 1 only.
09-13-2014, 12:32 PM
