MX-3.com

I plan on retiming and putting a belt on this weekend,,, is there anyway tge valves could contact the pistons? I dont want to remove the heads due to no head gasket availability...

Is this a interference engine????

All Mazda "B" and "K" engines are non interference.

My old K8 had a waterpump leak, Which weakened the timing belt. It snapped at 7000+rpm in 1st gear. After a new timing belt and waterpump the car ran great...well as good as it did before anyway

My concern us that its a KF . And the 10.1 compression.....if its a timing belt and no valve damage I'd like to put in some klde cams

pop your valve cover off first and inspect your cams, You might already have the ones from the ZE as some Kf's came with and some came with you, so if you do have them, you'll only hurt you're performance, that and kl cams won't do anything anyway to a kf engine.

And you do not have to worry about your valves being damaged.

my KLZE tming snapped while driving in the worst possible ways. THere's no way you'd have damage if mine didn't royally eff up.

SuperK wrote:my KLZE tming snapped while driving in the worst possible ways. THere's no way you'd have damage if mine didn't royally eff up.

How many km was on your timing belt when it snapped?

In December '09 I bought an MX-6 "M Edition", in almost mint condition, for $300, because its timing belt had snapped, so the owner assumed the engine was gone.
Towed it home, and when I opened the timing belt cover, I realized the belt hadn't snapped, but the idler bolt had sheared off. Got a new belt, and reassembled, but I made a mistake, and used the wrong timing marks to align the cam sprockets, effectively getting the right bank cams almost 180 degrees off. When I turned the ignition key, even with the wrong timing, a tankful of 1+ year old gas, and after the car had been sitting under a tree for more than 1 1/2 year, the car started at the first try (with a new battery, of course). The car drove (badly), for months (and sheared the idler bolt twice), before I realized my mistake with the timing. Once I did, even after all those problems, and all those miles working with the rear bank completely off timing, I redid the timing using the right marks, and the engine started working perfectly from the get go.

So, two things are clear from that story:

1. K engines are rugged beyond belief.

2. Unless you drop a valve (which has nothing to do with the timing), there's NO WAY you will damage your engine because of a timing issue.

Pritchett: My 6 had 109000 miles when I bought it, and the timing belt was new, so I assume the previous owner had it replaced, and made the same mistake I made with the timing, and then sold the car, thinking the engine was history. Mazda recommends replacing the timing belt every 100000 miles (160000 Km), although I know some people had kept going for twice that mileage without issue. Either way, if you're close to the 160000 Km mark, I'd recommend you replace it. It's cheap insurance against getting stranded in the middle of nowhere. Just make sure you do the timing right.

I put a new water pump and the new timing belt from my last engine which got fewer then 10 km on it, onto my new motor. So I'm hoping I'll be good for the life of the engine.

Well, that depends on the life of the engine...