Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

I’m looking to change the cam belt on
my Honda engined 1991 416 Gti.

Although I’ve owned the car for 27 years I have always been able to find a reliable garage to do the repair.

Since moving to the South West I have struggled to find someone to do the repair.
It doesn’t help that I have brought some of the parts , good quality parts, one garage would do the repair but wants to buy the parts themselves.

I have been putting the job off for a couple of years ( lots of reasons) but now the cam belt is over 7 years old and I need to crack on with it.
The thing that concerns me most is I’ve heard tales of how hard it is to remove the crankshaft pulley bolt that’s torqued up to some incredible value.

The manuals tells you to lock the flywheel with a tool which you can no longer get.
But reading some of the technical articles on the forum it seems you can make a special tool to fit the crankshaft pulley to stop it rotating and then use a 3/4” SD 1000mm breaker bar to crack the bolt.

I intend to try to undo the crankshaft pulley bolt prior to actually starting the job , just to see if it is a problem (If access allows)

However it also seems that people have used impact wrenches to remove this bolt .

What are people’s experience of this?

I have seen videos of people locking the system by putting the car into gear and putting the brakes on hard to stop the crankshaft turning.

Do you have to do this with an impact driver?

As the car is an auto I wouldn’t be able to do this so wondering if this is an option I have .

Just wondering if the force of the impact driver is so instantaneous that the crankshaft doesn’t have time to turn.

Appreciate any comments based on peoples experience.

Many thanks

I have a milwaukee 1/2 impact gun and no issue ever undoing nut on D Or k series and honda d series is NOT left hand thread as some experts may tell you .

I have made a tool which has pins which locate into the crank pulley and has a long bar about 12" long which catches on the front subframe cross member. This locks the crank pulley and allows me to undo the crank pulley through the front wing access hole with a normal wrench. Only ever had the one which was silly stupid tight - find the ones I do regularly never an issue but the one sounded like a shot gun when it went off and did not have my tool at the time - took off the starter and locked the flywheel ring with a bar to allow a 4ft long breaker to eventually break the bolt torque. Not able to post image of my tool as no idea how sorry but a flat plate with with 10mm pins into the existing holes into the pulley works really well for me. Easy job to do - takes me about 60 mins now I have done a few. Biggest problem is working out what to take out and what to leave and making sure that all the items will unscrew etc good luck

Thanks for everyone’s input.
I have heard about people making a tool to lock the crankshaft and had an idea of what was needed,
Knowing the pin size is really helpful as it means I can see what I’ve got available in the garage to make a tool.
I’m hoping the mechanic I’ve used previously was sympathetic with all the nuts and bolts and it all comes apart relatively quickly- fingers crossed

I have only done two d16 cambelt changes and both were a pain. The first was on my own car, lockup tool broke a chunk off the pulley as the nut was so tight, ended up removing the starter motor and locking on the flywheel. The second was HHR Civic, locked at the flywheel and needed a scaffold pole to undo
Good luck!