Timing Belt Clinic Ford Ka II 1.2

In the last issue of CM, we made a start on replacing the timing belt on the Fiat/Lancia 1.2-litre SOHC engine found in the Mk2 Ford Ka and were seemingly making a meal of the job. The book time is less than three hours, assuming there are no corroded fastenings and you don’t need to take photographs of every single step. We weren’t hoping to compete and we didn’t anticipate further difficulties, although this perhaps highlights the degree of difficulty for such a seemingly DIY job. As you’ll see from the following steps, we were glad we’d acquired the appropriate timing tools from Sealey, but still came across problems with timing-up the engine and fitting the timing belt.

Timing troubles

These problems were no reflection of the timing tools, but the potential problems that can arise with a timing belt replacement. For instance, this engine has a variable valve timing (VVT) mechanism, and we suspect it may have caused the camshaft sprocket to rotate, although