A rattle on cold start, or a misfire that won’t settle, and someone has put the words “timing chain” to it along with a number carrying three or four figures. Before you agree to that, it’s worth knowing what you’re agreeing to. A chain replacement means taking the front of the engine apart, and nobody should authorise that until it’s been established that the chain is actually the fault.
The work is done at our workshop on the Medway City Estate in Rochester. Tunbridge Wells drivers either come over for the diagnosis or we fetch the car in on our own recovery truck. We’ve no premises in Tunbridge Wells and we’re not going to imply otherwise.
There’s no mileage figure at which a chain gets changed. It’s replaced on condition, and the condition slides slowly, so what people notice first is almost always a noise. Overnight the oil drains back down into the sump, and the hydraulic tensioner that holds the chain taut loses its pressure with it. Start the engine and, for a few seconds, any slack in the chain is free to slap against the plastic guides until oil pressure builds and takes it up again. That’s the classic cold-start rattle, and it’s why the noise fades as the car warms.
These are the symptoms owners ring us about:
None of that proves a chain on its own. A tensioner that’s lost pressure, a guide rail worn through, a cam sensor, or oil that simply isn’t reaching the top of the engine will each give you much the same noise and much the same driving fault, and each one is a different bill entirely. So we start with the diagnostic, which is £69.
We read stored and pending fault codes, then the freeze-frame data captured at the moment the fault set, because that tells us what the engine was doing rather than just what it complained about. We watch cam and crank signals live to see whether they’re actually drifting out of step, check oil pressure, and listen to where in the engine the noise comes from and at what point in the cycle. Then the tensioner and guide condition gets looked at rather than assumed.
One honest warning: a chain that rattles under load and no longer quietens isn’t a car to keep driving while you think about it.
After the diagnosis you get an itemised figure and a plain explanation of what’s in it and what isn’t. Nothing is started without your say-so, and if you want to go away and think about it, the car sits where it is. If you want a second opinion on the figure, take it with you.
The person who gives you that price is the person who’ll have the engine open. That’s the difference between us and a quote generated by a booking network before anyone has heard the car run. When the work’s done, timing is verified, codes are cleared and rechecked to be sure they stay clear, and the car goes out on the road before you get it back.
It depends on what the parts measure once the cover is off. Guides, tensioner and sprockets get checked properly rather than renewed as a reflex. If they measure good you don’t pay for them. If they’re worn, replacing them while the engine is already open is the sensible call, because on this job almost all of the money is the labour to get in there, not the parts themselves. Worn guide material is also worth chasing, since it doesn’t stay put once it breaks away. It goes into the oil, which is where the trouble starts again.
If the chain has already jumped or snapped, the question changes. Valves and pistons end up trying to occupy the same space, and what that has cost you can only be seen with the head off. We’ll tell you honestly what we find, including when the repair is worth more than the car.
There’s no chain price on this page, and that’s deliberate, because any figure written before we’d looked at your car would be a guess dressed up as a quote. What the job costs turns on which engine it is, whether the chain is driven from the front of the engine or the back (the back means separating the gearbox to reach it), whether the tensioner and guides alone are the problem, and what’s found once the cover comes off.
The figure we do publish is the £69 engine diagnostic. When the repair is booked in with us, that’s usually credited against the bill. It’s job dependent rather than automatic, it won’t always apply on smaller work, and you’ll be told which way it falls before you commit to anything. After the diagnosis you get an itemised quote and the work starts only when you’ve approved it.
This is worth reading if you drive a Ford 1.0 EcoBoost or a Peugeot or Citroen 1.2 PureTech. Both run a wet belt, a cambelt that lives in engine oil rather than behind a dry cover. As the belt ages it sheds material, that material ends up in the sump, and it collects on the oil pickup screen. Restrict the pickup and oil stops getting to the top of the engine quickly enough on start-up. The result is a rattle from cold that sounds, to anyone who isn’t looking for it, exactly like a stretched timing chain.
The cost of getting that wrong is the whole point. Buy a chain kit and the labour to fit it for a wet belt fault and you’ve paid a large bill for the wrong job and still have the noise. We’ve a separate page covering wet belt inspection and replacement in detail, and a blog explaining how belts and chains differ, so we won’t repeat the ground here.
Most of what comes through our doors is timing drive work on those engines, which is why we look at the oil side before we quote a chain.
The workshop sits on the Medway City Estate in Rochester, just off the A289. From Tunbridge Wells that’s typically the A228 north through Tonbridge and Snodland, or the A21 up to the M25 and round to the A2 east, and drivers make the trip because the diagnosis happens first and the price is agreed before a spanner is picked up.
If the car isn’t fit to drive, we have our own recovery truck. Not a service we ring round for, a truck we own, so a car that won’t start, that’s stuck in limp mode or that’s been standing on a driveway for months can still get here. Tell us where it is and what it’s doing, and we’ll sort the collection with you when you book.
Phone: 01634 510 780
Email: bookings@medwayvehicleservices.
co.uk
Unit 3 Cliffe Yard, Anthonys Way, Medway City Estate, Rochester, Kent, ME2 4DY
