A rattle for the first few seconds after a cold start, or a misfire that comes and goes, and somebody has told you it’s the timing chain. Before a price means anything, the first job is establishing whether your engine has a chain at all. Plenty of the cars booked in here with that exact noise are Fords, Peugeots and Citroens running a belt inside the engine instead, and that’s different work at different money. Guess wrong and the quote is wrong with it.
A timing chain has no service interval. It runs on oil pressure, with a tensioner taking up the slack, so a worn one is loudest in the first seconds from cold, before pressure builds and the tensioner takes hold. As it stretches, the camshafts drift out of step with the crankshaft, and that shows up as rough running, a misfire or a cam and crank correlation code stored in the ECU. If it jumps a tooth, or the tensioner lets go, valves and pistons can meet.
A wet belt is a different thing altogether: a cambelt running inside the engine, in the oil. As it ages it sheds material, and that debris blocks the oil pickup and starves the engine of pressure. Ford’s 1.0 EcoBoost is built that way, and so is the 1.2 PureTech in the Peugeot 208, 2008 and 308 and the Citroen C3 and C4. Before you ring anybody, this is roughly how it sorts out.
A fixed price for the wrong job isn’t a saving. Nothing in that list proves a chain on its own, because a cam sensor, its wiring, low oil pressure or a fuelling fault can sound and read much the same, and we won’t strip an engine on the strength of a code somebody read out in a car park.
The diagnostic is £69. We listen to it cold and again warm, pull stored and pending codes with the freeze-frame data from the moment the fault set, watch cam and crank signals live while the engine runs, check oil level and condition, and get eyes on the tensioner and guides wherever they can be seen without a strip. Most diagnostics are same-day, although a fault that only shows under load or after a few miles has to be driven to be found, and a road test can’t be rushed into a slot. The £69 is usually credited against the repair when the work is booked in with us. It’s job dependent rather than automatic on smaller jobs, and you’ll know which before you commit to anything.
If another garage has already fitted a tensioner, a coil or a set of plugs and the rattle or the misfire is still there, bring it in. We start from the symptom rather than from what’s already been changed, and if the last repair was the right one we’ll tell you so.
One to three days, depending on the engine and how far it has to come apart to reach the chain. You’ll get the number for your own car once we know what’s in it, rather than a guess over the phone.
It also isn’t a job that can be done on a driveway or at the roadside, and we don’t offer it mobile. The car needs to be on a ramp, the engine supported while mounts come off, the camshafts and crank held with the proper locking and timing tools, and a clean bench to reassemble on. Get any of that wrong and the timing ends up a tooth out, which is how a running engine turns into a bent one.
A chain that’s jumped or snapped usually leaves the car dead where it stopped. We run our own recovery truck, so a car that won’t start, sits in limp mode or hasn’t moved for months can be brought in without you arranging anything separately. Ring the workshop and we’ll sort it out between us.
Worth saying plainly: on a car that’s already jumped, the diagnostic can turn up bent valves or damage to the pistons, and on an older car the honest verdict is sometimes that the repair costs more than the car is worth. We’d rather find that and say it early than get halfway through and hand you a bill nobody agreed to.
Between £1,200 and £3,500. It’s a range rather than a single price because engines differ so much in what it takes to reach the chain. On some it sits at the front and comes off with the timing cover; on others the strip-down goes a long way deeper before anyone can see it. The kit varies as well, since a chain, tensioner, guides, sprockets and seals don’t cost the same on every engine.
If you’ve seen a cheaper figure advertised, check what’s being priced, because a lot of those numbers are cambelt jobs, which is a different repair. Nothing starts here without your approval: you get the exact figure once the engine is identified, and the job carries a one-year warranty. It ends with a road test and someone explaining what was done.
All makes and models, petrol, diesel, hybrid and electric, including older cars a main dealer would rather not have on the ramp. Timing drive work is what comes through these doors week in, week out, and the badge on the bonnet matters far less than what’s driving the camshafts.
You speak to the workshop, too. No booking platform in the middle, no call centre taking a message. On a job with this much strip-down in it, the person you want on the phone is the one holding the tools.
We’re on the Medway City Estate in Rochester, just off the A289, and cars come to us rather than the other way round. Owners drive in from Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham, Strood and Rochester itself, and Gravesend drivers pick up the A2 and come in on the A289. Some travel further across Kent for timing work, which is why the diagnosis comes first and the figure is agreed before anyone starts. If the car can’t be driven, the truck goes out for it.
Phone: 01634 510 780
Email: bookings@medwayvehicleservices.
co.uk
Unit 3 Cliffe Yard, Anthonys Way, Medway City Estate, Rochester, Kent, ME2 4DY
