hello cordia owners.

right now i have my engine in pieces (g62). seems i've been driving around with a blown head gasket for a couple of weeks. came round a corner, bout 2300rpm in 3rd gear and, woops, i'm driving a rotary. always wondered where this mysterious oil leak was coming from, and sure enough, after taking the head off, the gasket was split between 3 & 4 cylinder. i'll post pics once i get the home net working again (doing this from work)
anyhow, i have both timing belts off and the secondary belt (slient shaft belt) was totally stripped and bare (was driving on borrowed time). i'd say it was about 21 years old that belt, lazy bastard previous owner.

now the point of this post. Does anybody have any ideas on how to get the crankshaft sprocket off with the engine IN the engine bay? I have one idea, but the chassis strength will be put into question to give it a go. Just wondering if anyone has done it successfully with EASE. There's no room for a gear puller (let alone a place to grip). I'm thinking of screwing 2 bolts into the sprocket. The 2 bolts will be attached to a plate. Then a middle bolt through the plate connected to another plate inside wheel arch, add a nut to middle bolt and tighten. This will put stress on the inner wheel arch but from what i can see it should be strong enough.

What are your thoughts? Cheers.

BTW, does anybody here do anything fancy to the front case oil seals when installing new ones? I ask this because the previous owner had put blue silicone around the outer edges of each seal. Not too smart but probably only way to go if you don't have new seals.

The more i pull me cordia to pieces, the more i realise how cheap some cordia owners are. Not to mention lazy, stupid and impatient. Here's a tip for anyone doing there own engine work. DO IT PROPERLY!!!!

The sprocket will come off easily, no need for a puller.

Grab some CRC or degreaser and clean the area.

With your hands slowly pull and giggle the sprocket off, it will move, may need some more CRC.

Be careful of the crankshaft key.

on your last point.... yeah you see some dodgy crap going on, since the cars are so cheap these days you rarely see people spending money to do things properly. Most cordia owners are backyard mechanics these days... and often poor ones (like me for example! ).

On the note of timing belts though, since cordia's won't actually do any damage when they snap a timing belt, there is little point in replacing them at 100000km service intervals. Most people just wait until they break and then replace them then. so as long as you aren't going on a long trip and have to rely on the car then most people are content with doing dodgy sh1t. Not to mention that because they are turbo, alot of people thrash them and install mods or up the boost.

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now a certified cordia owner....