replacing timing belt

any trick to get the nut off the crank shaft pulley to get to the timing belt?

That nut does't need to come off unless you're taking the oil pump off. There's 4 or 5 small bolts that surround that bolt that need to come off, and the pulley will fall right off.

I have this guy helping me do this and he won't listen to me, a dumb woman telling him what to do. He finally got the timing belt off but he wouldn't tell me that he did what you told me to do.

Now I have another question. When the car stopped running, we checked the carberator to see if there was gasoline in the float bowl. There was none even though there was gas to the carberator. Now, when we replace the timing belt will gas start going into the carberator float bowl again?

I really appreciate your help. The guy helping me knows how to work on vintage cars, or so he says, but has never worked on a Metro. He laughs at my little Metro and calls it a disposable car, just a piece of junk. I love my little Metro and has been really good up until this and I know it is just normal maintaince. I bought the car last year and it had 65,000 miles on it. I have since put another 25,000 miles on it myself with no problems up until now. It is a 93 Metro convertible. Sooo cute!

Enough, I just want you to know I really appreciate your help, I really do. Thank you so very much.

metros are fuel injected. what your looking at is a throttle body not a carb. there is no float bowl. only the lines going to it and the injector on top have fuel in them

metros are fuel injected. what your looking at is a throttle body not a carb. there is no float bowl. only the lines going to it and the injector on top have fuel in them
So there shouldn't be gas in the "throttle body"? I hope this guy listens to me after I am just a dumb woman. Thank you for your response.

if the person working on the car can't tell the difference between a throttle body and a carb i would find someone else to work on the car, they are just gonna mess it up

Breezy,
You are not the dumb woman here! Crvette is one of the most knowledgable guys here on the forum, I respect his opinion and continue to learn from him. After all he has only done about 3 million engine swaps .... maybe a little exaggeration. But I agree, a lot of people don't seem to ba able to tell the simple difference between a carburetor and a throttle body. The throttle body sprays like a big fuel injector, where a carb simply meters fuel with air.

3 million? that would make me about 400 years old lol. i would say closer to 50 on the metro engine swaps. and i wasn't calling you a dumb woman, just saying be carefull having someone work on the car thats not familiar with the metro stuff like pulling lower pulley without removing the "big" bolt

It's not un-common for people to call it a carb. It's shaped like one, and looks like one. It's made like that because some of the metros were carbed, just not in north america. Countries like India, and Jamaica have all kinds of carbed engines because there's less emissions laws. But yea, if he takes the air cleaner off, and can't see the HUGE fuel injector taking up 60% of the throttle body, he's an idiot. Don't let him touch your car. He'll end up making the problem much worse than it has to be. I respect mechanics that love old carbed pushrod engines, but a fuel injected overhead cam engine with a timing belt is a completely different animal. It's actually much easier than it looks. I can do the timing belt on my dohc engine in about 20-30 minutes. Oh, and I agree, you're not the dumb woman, he's the man who thinks he knows all, and is probably a bumbling fool :lol2:

Ok well, we replaced the timing belt, new air filter and spark plugs. The metro still won't start. I know I should have taken it to a knowledgable mechanic but right now I am a little financially short. Oh well, aren't we all at sometime or another, enough whinning. This morning he checked the coil to see if it were sparking and there is spark at the spark plug. He called back later and told me to pull the filter and see if there is gas flowing and if not put some gasoline into the bowl as if I were priming it. If it doesn't start then it could be the computer to the car. I work nights and just had gotten off work to face this mess with him and finally got to bed at 10am. I have a terrible headache from sleeping hard thank God I don't have to work tonight. There I go whinning again!! Sorry guys :uhoh: Ok lets start from scratch right? We replaced the timing belt, what could he have done wrong with that? Perhaps it was something more than the timing belt when it died. Perhaps I should just have it towed to a garage and have it fixed. I really am sorry for this mess.

have him run a compression test on the engine. if he put the belt on right it should be around 170psi per cylinder, if its really low like 100 or less he has belt on wrong or there is something wrong with the engine internally

ever get it started and if so what was the problem?

Sorry for not getting back sooner. No I never got it started and this friend of mine and I towed it to a mechanic this morning. They all say it can't be the timing belt because there is a spark. One person says one thing another says another. The mechanic I took it to has worked on Metros so I am hoping he knows what he is doing and can tell me. I should know something today hopefully. :confused:

Breezy,
I had a similar problem with my 95 Metro 1.0L engine. I replaced the head (first time for me) and had the caps too tight over the cam. It ran for about 30 seconds but that caused the cam to sieze up and broke the belt. I replaced the belt and properly set the torque on the caps, but couldn't get the car to start again. It turned out that when the cam siezed and quit turning, the drive sprocket continued to turn until the belt broke. It created a gouge in the back side of the sprocket past the locating nub on the end of the cam. You can't see the damage until you remove the drive sprocket because it is concealed by the nut and washer. For over two weeks I kept resetting the timing and fooling around with the car, not realizing that the movement had caused my timing marks to be off. It wasn't until I decided to completely remove the cam that I finally found the problem. Hope my bad experience helps you!