Re: [alfa] single-row timing chains

[Jon Pike <jhpike@xxxxxxx>]

 Well..  I guess that my info should be taken in the context of "it's
what I've been told, it's what everybody says".

Barring any hard data,  it could be the result of a succesful "mechanic
friendly" rumor that gets passed around..  but it was pretty strong and
universal from my small sample.  Could also be that BMW had a durable
chain,  but Mercedes didn't, in those series of cars.  Could also be, it
happens fairly rarely,  but the consequeces are so dire, you probably
want to have it done just for insurance. 

Anyone spend a lot of time in large Mercedes forums?  I checked out a few
web BBS's.. nothing like the Alfa world.  Seems that almost nobody works
on their own Benz. I literally spent 20+ minutes searching the Net for
the spark plug gap spec!!  Whole 'nother world...  ;-)

Jon

Gwynne W. Spencer wrote:

  Interesting - I follow BBS with a very large  audience re BMW E39
  models and I have not heard of a single timing chain failure for the
  V8 (uses single row chain) nor for the inline 6 engines (do not know
  if they are single row, but will ask)

  Gwynne Spencer

  At 02:11 PM 11/8/2004 -0800, you wrote:

      I believe when Mercedes went to single-row chains on the V8s
      in the 70s/80s
      they had a lot of trouble, and eventually went back to
      double-row.  I recall
      they even offered a conversion to retrofit single-row chains
      on older
      engines to double-row.

    I can verify this..  We "adopted" my wife's parent's 81 380SL a
    while ago.. and it had had this modification done to it. 
    Strongly reccomended by their mechanic,  and from several other
    sources I encountered since, it was a weak point in those engines
    and quite a few broke.
    This usually trashed the engine, and probably totaled many cars, 
    with the huge cost of a major engine rebuild from a dealer
    getting pretty close to value of the car.

    Jon and Marcia
    77 Spider ("Angelina" our "27yr old Black Italian Co-Wife")
    81 380SL (formerly "Ben" now "Ben Her's" my wife's "23yr old
    Blond German Co-Husband")
    (Somehow, I REALLY don't feel the same about that second
    classification!!!)
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