Kia's 3.5 litre

Yes they use BELTS , and YES if the belt breaks it is a ZERO tolerance engine it will ruin the motor !

Belt, yes and yes.

But that and fuel mileage that is a tad disappointing are the only down sides I have seen of this engine. I just changed the oil in my '04 Sedona. This has been a seriously good motor so far, one of the best I have ever had.

Tom Wenndt

Owners manual calls for the belt on the '02 to be replaced every

60,000 miles (about $350 at the dealership I called).

-- Christian

I would be curious if anyone has ignored the scheduled service interval and tried to see how far the belt would go before breaking. Not smart but interesting.

As for the warranty, if the belt breaks before 60,000 (I'm sure this has occurred once or twice but not commonly), they will cover it. If you want that 100,000 mile warranty for the engine, the belt MUST be changed at

60,000.

Now if you had, say 61,234 miles, then got it replaced and it had not broken, I doubt they would void the rest of the warranty.

Bluntly, I traded in my '02 Sedona on an '04 rather than face that expensive service, especially since the 60,000 mile interval also requires spark plugs (a nasty job for the three on the back of the engine), and more. With over

40,000 miles on my '04, that question will be looming again soon.

Tom Wenndt

I recently changed the timing belt on a Hyundai by myself @ 60,000 mile. As Hyundai and Kia share designs and parts, here is my opinion from that experience.

Changing the timing belt at 60,000 looks like wasting money. Because, the replaced belt looked almost new. There was not much sign of worn. I heard a story of changing it arount 80,000 worked fine. There is another story about broken timing belt at 110,000. So, I guess 60,000 is a very conservative number. In fact, the belt is a Japanese part (maybe same as Mitshibisi or Toyota and Honda).

That's my opinion. I don't encourage anybody of the risk. Change it @

60,000 when you want to keep out of trouble.

When warranty doesn't matter, I would inspect the belt and change it only when it shows some signs of worn.

On Mon, 08 May 2006 16:21:06 +0000, Robert Black took a five-minute break from flipping burgers to boot the etch-a-sketch and scribble out:

Yeah, they ain't BMW. :)

Now, if they'd only fix the mufflers so they weren't so damn noisy. :P

Cost too much money. I was talking to a buddy who has an '03 Honda Odessy. His tranny just blew and they took care of it under warranty. Total cost

- $3200. They also recommended his belt be changed (62000 miles) but when he looked at it, there was no visible wear and tear. He figures he'll sit on it for awhile. By comparison, his Toyota T100 has 280,000 miles and the timing chain has never been touched.

(fixed yer toppost)

Oh, he just had it investigated while it was under repair. The Honda 3.5L engine (which I have in my Saturn Vue) is notorious for bad trannies.

I think we're talking apples and oranges. The belt/chain in your motorcycle is the drive. The same buddy I mentoned above races dirtbikes. He's got one with a shaft (!) drive. Wierd. I'd never seen such a thing. I think it is a honda 900cc bike. Don't know exactly.

Cost and power. I hadn't heard the term before so I looked it up.

Now as for the Sedona, it appears to be an interference engine.

Interesting.

Can I go back to my Maxima with the timing chain? Oh, wait, I had to repair that at 70,000 miles. I forgot. :P

On Tue, 16 May 2006 19:20:47 +0000, Robert Black took a five-minute break from flipping burgers to boot the etch-a-sketch and scribble out:

Yeah, I know what you mean. My '95 Jimmy had the 4.3 Vortec pushrod, which is essentially a 350 minus two cylinders. It had larger displacement but the same power. Except for the stupid fuel injector (which was fixed in a later model) the thing was bulletproof. At 150K miles when I sold it, the engine was in perfect shape. There were other things wrong with the truck, but the engine had another good 150K miles to go. Oh, and I never replaced the timing chain.

I only replaced it for the Sedona because I needed the extra seating space and my wife didn't want to spend $30K for a Suburban.

:)