You still need to watch out for any rattling though - and the tensioners can still wear and fail.
Whoops! My apologies, thanks for that information. I must have got that confused with another engine. The Ford is 35 years’ old and with me twice that age, plus a few years, the memory could just be fading! 
I did have a couple of Vauxhalls too, one of those I am sure had a toothed cam belt as I took the head off to try and cure a really bad oil leak, it was poor design of an oil way from the block to the head. Perhaps that is the one I am getting confused with?
Out of curiosity tomorrow I will get the manual out for the Ford plus the car is in the garage so I must lift the bonnet and check it out. :shock: 
Baz, what would nark me the most is, regardless of your “No Claims Protection”, you will have to recount this tale on any potential insurance renewals for the next five years, and will always be suspicious if the event has impacted somewhere on the quotation, that is very tedious.
My car is much clearer than me .
It knows how to get to my favourite restaurant ( unfortunately I don’t have one) it’s can download music ( I don’t know how ) in fact I still don’t know how to find LBC on the radio .
If something goes wrong and it did last year a warning sign something to do with the 'loom 'they said -we were no wiser but it was a massive bill .
My previous Honda SatNav was brilliant. Despite the disc being 14 years old, I don’t think it ever sent me the wrong way.
My new Nissan SatNav however does not seem as reliable and to make things worse, the voice is a sort of ‘morph’ of all accents which ends up sounding Indian. Bloody annoying! I find it difficult to listen too without it getting on my nerves. I suppose it was done purposely of course…
Spitfire – yes that is very annoying. I find anything to do with insurance is very tedious, especially as I do my best never to claim by driving safely. Even worse though was that originally I wasn’t going to claim unless it was the more expensive replacement of the sensor. Seeing that there is an excess of £150 and a possible increase of £110 on my premium next year plus any aggravation making the claim I just thought I would only save £140 so best to just pay the £400, only claiming if it turned out to be the £1,400 for a new sensor.
How wrong that would have turned out to be. Had I needed then to claim for the larger amount that would not have been possible as I couldn’t claim retrospectively. Any incident should be notified to the Insurers as they would have known an incident would have taken place to need replacement of the sensor if I had claimed for that. Notifying them of the incident, even if I hadn’t made a claim, meant they would have put the incident on the Insurance Bureau’s database and the Insurers therefore could have increased my next year’s premium. On being informed of that I decided that even if it was just £140 in my pocket rather than the Insurer’s then I would claim irrespective of it being for the lesser amount of £400 or the full cost of £1,400.
Plenty of choice there, very interesting. However, possibly all with the risk of expensive repairs should new technology prove problematical. I see the VW models came out of it quite well. I had a VW Polo as a courtesy car when my VW Golf was in for servicing, they are very good with all the same ‘goodies’ as on the VW Golf but they do seem to lack the ‘quality’ of the VW Golf. With a very much smaller engine they definitely are not quite as ‘nippy’.
And they tend to ‘fudge’ the emission results. 
Yes, tell me about it. Fortunately my VW Golf was not one of those affected by ‘the emissions scandal’, this was ascertained by checking the VIN number on the VW website. However, being the make of car it is I reckon all VW cars were devalued in the eyes of any prospective buyers. Impossible to prove but I am sure that’s happened as I get a trade-in valuation every year, just to keep an eye on this. £11,000 depreciation over five years means around £180 a month loss, quite apart from usual running costs. Taking everything into account it’s almost cheaper to hire a car instead when required or use taxis. At those losses a chauffeur-driven car might even be possible! 
To be honest, I don’t give a toss about emission results.
All of this eco-warrior nonsense makes absolutely no difference to the planet as a whole. Why don’t they have a mass rally in China?
Quite agree, whenever China is shown in relation to anything about emissions there are chimneys belching out smoke!
Another area that is seldom mentioned with anything about emissions and impacts on the environment is that of aircraft. These are flying above us all the time chucking out far more than our cars and home environments.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-many-cars-equal-the-co2-emissions-of-one-plane/
Me neither. They need to stop planes dumping fuel first. 
Apparently, these refrigerated lorries are very polluting, at least the fridge units are, and there’s thousands of them on the road in this country alone,
You want to talk pollution then take a look at shipping and cruise liners
The blatantly obvious doesn’t register to those above though…
A huge new cruise ship terminal planned for the river Thames would lead to a surge in dangerous levels of air pollution in the heart of the capital with unknown health consequences for hundreds of thousands of people, campaigners have warned.
Under the proposals, which have been given planning permission, up to 55 giant cruise ships would dock in London every year. Each ship would need to run its diesel engines round the clock to power onboard facilities, generating the same amount of toxic NO2 emissions as almost 700 continuously running lorries.
“As we find out more about the damage air pollution is doing to people’s health it is unthinkable that something like this can go ahead,” said local resident Laura Eyres, who is one of those leading the fight against the development.
“There is simply no justification for having these huge ships sitting here right next to busy residential areas and schools, belching out this level of pollution with all the associated damage to people’s health that have now been proven.”
Yes, you are quite correct. Also the Ford Essex 3.0 is chain driven, no belt. Both engines have been in cars I have owned, I was getting confused with two Vauxhalls I also owned, both had the V4 slant engines with OHC cams which were belt-driven. All my cars have usually been driven for over 100,000 miles and all except the VW Golf 1.6 TDi Diesel I now drive have been maintained by myself. Far too complicated now to do this so best left to the garage – I am not a computer engineer, much preferring to restrict myself to Apple Macs!
The original problem and reason for this thread, my car’s ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) and Front Assist Braking (Emergency Braking) sensor / camera being affected by colliding with a stray pheasant not keeping to the Green Cross Code, has now been fixed.
Last week the sensor / camera was checked out at a VW main dealers and found only to need re-calibrating. This was carried out and all is now working OK again. The final cost of this was around £450, paid by my insurance company. I made an insurance claim in case it was replacement of the sensor / camera at £1,400 was required. My Excess was £150 and other than this being annoying as it was my first ever claim in 57 years, the insurance claim has saved me expense. It’s reckoned next year’s premium may increase by £110 so added to the £150 Excess the saving is £190. Had it been replacement of the sensor / camera claiming on the insurance would have resulted in a far greater saving.
Modern cars like the VW Golf TDi are brilliant to drive but the cost of anything going wrong with the electronics / computerised items can be very expensive!
The lesson in all this – if driving ‘a computer on wheels’ beware of stray pheasants, rather difficult if living in a rural area as they are everywhere! 
To continue the story of damage caused by colliding with a pheasant and my claim on insurance.
This year’s renewal arrived and as posted previously I was expecting an increase of £110. Unusually this was far less, in fact just half, my premium had increased by just £55! That meant the eventual saving is £245 plus that keeps the trade-in value of the car as it should be. No chance of that with warning icons appearing on the dashboard screen, that would immediately reduce the value by the full amount of £1,300, assuming the worst that the sensor / camera might require replacing.
The insurance broker I use had searched around and found another insurer so advised a change to that one. Additionally that insurance carries an Excess of £100 where the other one was £150. I was advised that insurance company is only available to brokers so a good reason to allow them to continue arranging my car and home insurance.