Hi Everyone,
For the last few weeks, I' have been getting a small rattling noise. To narrow the noise down I took out the serpentine belt and started the car. It sounded like it was coming from the timing chain area. I replaced the timing tensioner since I had a spare, thinking it was a death rattle. But it didn’t go away, so I took out the valve cover and inspected the rails. They looked fine too.

However, when I tried to turn the crank to check the timing, I noticed that my crank pulley bolt was missing. Turns out I’ve been driving without the bolt all this time.

I rebuilt my engine 6 months ago and it seems the mechanics have forgotten to reinstall the crank pulley bolt when they put it back together: eek2:

Now I'm worried, if this could have done any internal damage to the engine. I've ordered a new crank pulley and bolt which should arrive soon.

I was wondering what else I should check while I'm down there. Should I open the timing cover/oil pump and investigate more etc...

Any advice you can provide will be appreciated. At this point my mechanic is refusing to take responsibility, even though I have brought up issues of odd noises before and they didn’t take seriously as they couldn’t replicate it. Also because I opened the valve cover.

 

yikes, so you pressed on the crank pulley and forgot the bolt. All its could do it work loose and then spin and wear the crank rod where you press. It it hard to get off ?

 

Well it was the shop that rebuilt my engine that didnt put the bolt back.. I even noticed that three of my oil pan bolts also haven't been tightened all the way. Also my oil catch can was installed with a big kink from the intake. Things you find out when you take a closer look. Thankfully Kurt in the video taught me alot about Mini's when I was in Seattle. If i had a garage I would have rather rebuilt the engine myself. But i guess these mistakes are human.

I still haven't taken the pulley out. I'm gonna take it off in the next few days once I get my new pulley.

You guys were very helpful getting parts shipped to Dubai when i needed last year. Thank you for that.

 

Welcome. Glad we could get your parts fast to Dubai, lots of MINIs there also. The Dubai MINI Club is pretty big.


That stinks about the bolt, hopefully not damage on the crank or anything.

 

All the missing bolts (Including the three bolts on the dampener, which were probably taken off for pulley removal during the rebuild and wasn't installed back). ATI Dampeners require all the nine bolts to be on the pulley itself. So this has been affecting its performance as well.Now just have to pull this thing out to access more damage


And yes, the Mini Club here is quite big. We just had a photo rally few weeks back and was a blast. Most of the cars are 2nd gen.

 

Yikes, thats not good, thanks for the update. I hope it did not spin on the crank rod.

Post up some pics of the Dubai meets, those guys seem to have the club thing done right !