Astra/Vetra engines

[Skompa]

Put an LS in it. Don't be a girl.

[Terribleone]

Meh. Timing belts are only a big deal to replace if you have no mechanical nous.

The_Monk, you can't just "pop in" a new ECU without coding it. Some people have transplanted the ECU/BCM/key reader into a car to get around the coding but thats just dumb and too much work to guess what a problem is.

Mechanically they aren't too bad, straight mechanical failure of the short motor/head assembly is pretty rare. Most, if not all problems are timing belt/water pump related or electrical.

Ive fixed more of these than I care to remember...but they're still a shit engine to start with. The car wrapped around it is probably worse than the engine itself.

[Mr Jones]

Have had a customers car throw a timing belt off at 47000 for no apparent reason. Belt just had a clean break in it. Old nanna driver that would never have punished the car. Not the only case I've heard of this either. Sometimes maintenance can't even beat these things…

[mizone]

The car wrapped around it is probably worse than the engine itself.

Too true. My sister owned a new one, I think they came out 99 or 00. I'll never forget driving it and thinking how bad it drove and relising "Lotus set up this suspension, just how bad was it to start with"

[Gammaboy]

Have had a customers car throw a timing belt off at 47000 for no apparent reason. Belt just had a clean break in it. Old nanna driver that would never have punished the car. Not the only case I've heard of this either. Sometimes maintenance can't even beat these things…

Belt was probably the original unit - which would put it somewhere well past its useby.

[bobbyd]

Hmmmm,

[Terribleone]

?

[bobbyd]

I will put some research into the SR20 and B20 engines

[snavy]

They are fine, I bet half the people commenting haven't owned one let alone had one apart. Timing belt at 60,000km is hardly a big deal unless you ignore the fact. Hydraulic buckets for valve actuation, cam bearings don't have replaceable shells which is totally fine unless you run it out of oil. Parts are cheap because these engines power cars all over the world. Plenty of aftermarket support. I have a daewoo x20sed in my 13s nubira, it has a great mid range and is a nice engine. Electrical hardware is a bit shit on Holden versions though as mentioned above.

I've worked on heaps of these and they are shit period. I can't name a car as unreliable as the Astra and Vectra. These cars aren't exactly old and they are falling apart already!

[snavy]

Meh. Timing belts are only a big deal to replace if you have no mechanical nous.

The_Monk, you can't just "pop in" a new ECU without coding it. Some people have transplanted the ECU/BCM/key reader into a car to get around the coding but thats just dumb and too much work to guess what a problem is.

Mechanically they aren't too bad, straight mechanical failure of the short motor/head assembly is pretty rare. Most, if not all problems are timing belt/water pump related or electrical.

Ive fixed more of these than I care to remember...but they're still a shit engine to start with. The car wrapped around it is probably worse than the engine itself.

Timing belt is on the easier side for these. Hard when the waterpump rusts on the block! Makes it even harder the wp housing sits flush with the block. Only option sometimes is to smash the alloy housing of the waterpump.

[cheapracer]

cam bearings are not there the cams run on the head alloy big fail there

??

Nearly every OHC and DOHC engine ever made runs direct onto the head material not to mention cams in blocks.

BTW, "alloy" is not a specific material.