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Hi Tom,
Thanks for the opinions regarding the belt, I already bought the long belt so I think I'll try that first. It's a good point that there's one less thing to go wrong, but my opinion tends to be they wouldn't have gone to the effort to put another idler there unless it was serving a purpose. The short belt is really only done because changing the lower centre idler in-situ is such a terrible job that they needed an alternative for when they're paying for it as a warranty job (or to get the service cheaper). Maybe I'm cynical.
The sludge check I did 5000km ago was no big issue, mainly thanks to this great source of info. The only problem was that the pan is just a few mm too big to get out easily, I'll probably check the screen again in another year or so, and at that point I will trim a little off both the pan and the lower part of the gearbox housing (which serves no purpose), which will make the job pretty easy indeed.
My engine was heavily 'varnished', it did a lot of highway miles by the previous owner so I suspect the dealer never used proper oil. There were also some black crumbly deposits in the timing case, but overall it was pretty good- pickup screen was clear. I cleaned up where I could reach, where I couldn't I left it well enough alone. That stuff is generally pretty well stuck to the walls. Decent quality oil changed far more often than their original recommendation should see to it that no new formations take place. I think carb-cleaner worked about the best to get the varnish etc off, I also tried some kind of aluminium frypan cleaner, it was a lot of work to get everything clean again, but whatever I could remove from the engine got cleaned perfectly before being refitted.
Check out pics on the link below.
Cheers
Steve
posted by 150.203....
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