Yes the belt went on my 1.8 Mk2 Astra SRI. Just fitted another belt and all good. The only issue was if the belt needed tensioned you did it by loosening the water pump and rotating it, as its pully was off-center. It usually always leaked and needed to come out and a new seal fitted. Just not a great design.
I did all kinds to mine had the head off to de-coke it and replace the valve stem oil seals. De-coke not needed, but I liked to mess aound then and they were easy to work on.
The other excellent design on cars fitted with this engine family was the ability to change the clutch without removing the gearbox. I did this on a 1.3, 1.6 and 1.8. It had an access cover on the bellhousing at the bottom. You removed this, removed a cover off the side of the gearbox and used an adapted slide hammer with I think a m7 bolt welded to it, to extract the gearbox input shaft. Then got an assistant to press the clutch, whilst fitting special clamps to hold the compressed clutch plate at different points by rotating the engine by the crankshaft pulley, rotating the pulley also to remove the clutch plate mounting bolts from the flywheel. Then the assmbly could fit through the aperature created removing the bellhousing cover. You could then get access to the release bearing fork to replace it. Then align the clutch with the input shaft before fully tightening the clutch plate mounting bolts. Took about an hour. Then they stopped fitting this feature. Why make things so easy and lose out on business, t*ssers..
They were much better cars than Ford's of that era just IMVHO. I then got into Nissan's in the mid 90's, which again were way better than Vauxhall's. I don't think I'd ever want to own either now, show's how things change..
