Vauxhall dealers recommend every four years irrespective of mileage. I did the one on the Astra myself but I'm going to let an Audi-trained mate do the one on the A4 next time we go up to Yorkshire in March (the whole front end of the car has to come off to gain access as the engine is N-S orientated.) I'll buy the parts on eBay and Mark will fit them for half what a garage would charge. Win-win as I buy original equipment parts at discount prices and also save on labour.

I've only ever had experience of one cam belt failure and that was on my son's 2L Mk III Capri many years ago. He was lucky as on the 2L engine the valves don't hit the pistons when the belt snaps. If it had been a 1.6L he'd have needed a new engine.

Fortunately, the memsahib's Honda Jazz has a good, old-fashioned timing chain so no worries about the drive degenerating with age on that. Belt, tensioner, water pump and coolant changes every four or five years is a nice little earner (rip off) for dealers.

Bring back the timing chain, I say.

Zitat

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Aaron Calder:- Vauxhall dealers recommend every four years irrespective of mileage............Honda Jazz..........a good, old-fashioned timing chain so no worries about the drive degenerating with age on that

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It seems that pre 2010 VAG cars are every 4 years or 60.000 miles according to our VW Dealer.
It's a bitter pill to swallow when there's only 40,000 on the clock. If there's a 95,000 mile upper limit on a belt then it's done less that half of that....

Well, well, I've just found out something very interesting. On our Ford Focus TDi, the recommendation for cam belt change is 120,000 miles or every 10 years.
Randa

How old is your VW, Roger?

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It'll be 5 years old in the middle of this year Pete and we know almost all of its 40,000 miles. It was an ex-demo with very few miles and very few months on it when we bought it.
We will most certainly get it done because failure to do so will play on our minds and if we didn't change it and the belt goes in some dark, distant country then we would be beside ourselves.
I don't know how much warranty one would get on a new cam belt and I'm assuming that a cam belt isn't part of a new car's warranty anyway. On the face of it, it looks like VAG can earn some easy money by putting the frighteners on it's customers.
VAG cars built before 2010 are every 4 years
Randa

It's a thorny issue, sure enough.

A new car with the three year manufacturer's warranty would be covered for the belt and all collateral damage if it snapped inside the 36 months.

A replacement OEM belt has a warranty against failure of its own for either one or - more usually in the case of VAG vehicles - two years.

If your replacement belt goes west inside its own warranty period you'd almost certainly be faced with the tricky issue of proving conclusively that the belt failure was the sole cause of all the other mechanical disasters which usually happen within the first second of it breaking.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that the manufacturer, with their much greater technical knowledge and infinitely greater resources, would fight you every inch of the way.

From the manufacturer's point of view it's a win-win situation when it comes to belt change interval recommendations. They'll err on the safe side to lessen the likelihood of bad publicity and possible litigation, and erring on the safe side brings cars in to the dealer network for expensive belt changes.

For the likes of you and I, it's a lose-lose. Gambling on the belt lasting longer than its recommended life (give or take a few months or a few thousand miles) doesn't make much sense when you consider the likely costs of a top-end rebuild.

What makes it interesting (or galling, depending on your point of view) is that the belt-change recommendation goalposts seem to move all the time, and almost always to a shorter interval. My guess is that's mostly the car makers covering their own arses.

Even more intriguingly, the belt change interval recommendations vary from country to country, and not necessarily countries with wildly differing climates or typical car use either. I really don't understand that one.

Our car has an 8 year 80,000 mile interval stipulated in the service book, but the blanket advice from Audi a few years ago was to stipulate 5 years or 75,000 for everything.

I got it done a couple of months before it was six years old but only had 45,000 on the clock, and it's a big front-end off job on a V6 diesel. Still, by that time it was well out of both its maintenance contract and its warranty so it went to a local independent specialist who charges forty notes an hour instead of the 120 that the closest dealership charges.

There are three cars in the family, and they all go there for everything I can't do. All the parts used are either OEM or manufacturer approved, so they have the same warranty as those used by Audi or Fiat in the case of Mrs Pete's 500. Like Brian I do all the air filters and other bits myself, and the only thing which stops me doing all the oil changes as well is the fact that our drive has a 20° slope...

After all this I can't help but arrive at the conclusion that the entire motor industry is run by duplicitous weasels in shiny suits, and the whole thing is a dastardly plot concocted by Sepp Blatter, Silvio Berlusconi or that utter nutter Vladimir Putin.

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Quote: Keith and Sue wrote in post #25

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As I understand it, Yeti's built after September 2010 are now on a 5-year cam belt change. The fixed price for the cam-belt change is £359, which doesn't sound too bad, but you have to add the price of the service, so you still end up with a hefty bill. Keith

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It makes sense to replace the water pump and coolant when you change a cam belt as you would need to remove the cambelt to gain access to replace a defective pump.

Belt and braces but worth it.