Hey all, new user here with a BIG problem. Today I started my 323 (it was/is VERY VERY cold outside) and it ran for about 5 seconds then died, went to restart and there was no compression....great timing belt broke... Waited till daylight then ripped apart the whole passenger side to get the belts and wheel well covers off. When I took the timing belt cover off the cam sprocket fell off also, the belt is perfectly fine (PO had it replaced before I bought it) but the bolt holding the cam sprocket to the cam snapped off and also sheared the pin off as well, I need to get this fixed ASAP and as cheap as I can since my budget is almost non-existant (think less than $100 is what I am shooting for). Any ideas on how to fix this? New cam? Drill out bolt and pin? Car has 130,000km on it and runs good otherwise.......except the AC doesnt work, it's leaking nasty green stuff from the bottom of the compressor (saw that today).

1998 323 1.3L 5-Speed

 

Ok I have this option available: I can lift the engine up enough to allow a drill to have enough room so I can drill out the bolt and dowel, I can order the bolt, dowel and camshaft sprocket through my mazda dealer here. Any tips or hints? How do you time the cam to the pistons? #1 TDC and line up a mark on the cam sprocket?

 

Well upon closer inspection of the camshaft before I tried to do anything major I noticed it was cracked right above where the dowel goes, took me about 10 mins to remove the camshaft and about another 15 to warm my fingers back to above freezing LOL. Now I need to source a new camshaft and figure out how to time all of it, anyone know how to time the cam to the crank?

 

Well got the used camshaft installed and had everything bolted up ok, only thing I noticed when assembling was the cam was very very hard to turn once it was fully installed.........weird I thought but maybe thats how this is, I have never worked on an OHC engine before. Well I fired it up and it started for about 5 seconds then died, went to restart and the cam sprocket fell off....yay....same exact thing as before, snapped bolt and sheared pin WTF....... Found out that the #1 cam journal is SHOT and is seizing up the cam, looks like new cylinder head now.