smudgyrover

Many thanks for all the advice guys - it basically confirms the conclusion I have come to - the workshop manual is no doubt the 'correct' way to go about it but with a little bit of ingenuity and common sense there are other ways of getting over the problem. I think I am going to use a combination of bottled water, Jim's 90 degree test and 'feel'! I have two cambelts to do - my own and my son's (chip off the old block y'know) and I will post my experience once we have had a chance to see if it works out.

Hi I am about to replace the cambelt on my 300Tdi Disco. The workshop manuals say the tensioner shpould be tightened using a dial type torque wrench with a range not exceeding 60 Nm. Problem is I cannot find one of these to buy - all the dial type torque wrenches I can find have a range to at least 150 Nm which would obviosly not give a very accurate reading at the 14 -16 Nm range needed to tension the belt. Question is, how do the rest of you get over this one? Is there a secret supplier of these torque wrenches who hides his light under a bushel? Or do you just guess? Or bodge it some other way? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi folks I am just starting to change the cam belt on my 300 Tdi and while I have everything in bits I am going to fit an electric cooling fan and remove the viscous fan. Having battled with the cooling fan shroud I am wondering if it will do anything useful if I have an electric fan 'pushing' air from the front of the radiator, and whether there is any reason to refit the shroud, so the question is what has everyone else with an electric fan done? Shroud or no shroud? Some thoughts or advice would be appreciated! While thinking about this I also wondered whether there is anything I should do about the intercooler - the cooling shroud is designed to give some airflow to the intercooler from the viscous fan so if I put an electric fan in to cool the radiator is there anything I should do to help the intercooler? Many thanks for any advice!