I finally built up the courage to tear down the engine on my Chery X1 myself after it sat parked in my garage for two and a half years. Days kept passing without me doing a thing, always making the excuse that I didn't have the money, but I’ve finally decided to make some progress—whether that means getting it fixed or finally putting it up for sale.
I stopped driving this car after a day when I was leaving to drop my kids off at school. Just a few feet from the house, it suddenly seized up and started making an awful clanking sound, like something was jammed tight inside. I shut it off immediately and pushed it back home. Ever since, I thought the engine had completely locked up, which kept me frustrated for a long time. But after spending the last three months getting my Chery Arauca back on the road, I feel motivated to tackle this issue myself.
Documenting my process on this blog has been a great motivator, serving as a roadmap and a way to track my progress—even if nobody else reads it because the community feels pretty dead. That’s why I keep writing; I often look back at old posts to recall maintenance dates or remind myself how I solved a problem when a breakdown repeats itself.
Every time I documented changing the timing belt kit, it helped refresh my memory on how to tear it down. That was the very first thing I did to begin disassembly. I had never completely removed the camshaft sprockets before—I had only loosened them enough to get the belt into position. This step forced me to do some research and figure out how much torque to apply when reassembling them.
Another step I'd never done before was pulling the exhaust manifold. First, you have to remove the heat shield to reach the bolts securing it to the exhaust pipe. I noticed it’s actually better to unbolt it and leave it attached to the cylinder head; there are only three bolts securing it to the exhaust pipe, compared to six attaching it to the head, which are way easier to remove once the head is off the block.
I also noticed that the ignition coil bracket sitting on top of the thermostat housing connects to the head. To comfortably reach those three bolts, it’s best to pull out the battery and its tray to clear up some elbow room. The thermostat housing was also sealed with silicone, so once the bolts were out, I had to use a bit of muscle to break it free.
I was shocked by how sludged up the cylinder head was—it has a lot of caked-on old oil, which was clearly the root cause of the damage. You might be able to see in the photo what actually happened: the engine wasn't locked up after all, but rather a camshaft seized up in its journal due to oil starvation. You can see how the high heat from the friction literally melted the head's aluminum.
This kind of damage is usually irreversible, requiring a brand-new cylinder head, but down here in my country, there are machine shops that recondition them. I'll be taking it to one of these shops to see if it's salvageable and how much it’ll cost. It could run around $200, which is steep, but it beats dropping $700 on a new one.
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