Re: 5-Cylinder Timing Belt

[walter@quattro.corp.inmet.com (Walter Meares)]

> It may well be that the valves don't interfere with each other - but this is 
> surely quite normal on a single-camshaft engine.  Losing the belt on a single-
> cam engine can never cause the valves to interfere, since the position they 
> adopt has to be a valid position defined by the cam.  What happens on a 20-

Not really.  The valve timing of a piston engine is such that the valves are
full open when the piston is away from top dead center.  At the top of the 
compression stroke, both valves are closed; at the end of the exhaust stroke
both are slightly open (the "overlap" period).  It's easy and fairly common
to design the engine where a full open valve will be hit by the piston, but
it would only happen if the crank and cam get out of sync, as when the cam
drive fails (belt, chain, gear, whatever).

> Phil Payne

Walter

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