I doubt the 10 years has been tested properly yet.
It's age more than mileage that tends to go against cambelts.
The dealers are a bit crap, yes. We run a mainly VW fleet with very few issues. AFAIK there's not been a single breakdown of the new Passats after 12 months / 30k miles on average.
The interiors will fall apart before they reach 50k miles, though if the C-Max I had a few weeks ago was anything to go by.
The original interval for the Zetec E was 8 years/80,000 miles. There are plenty of Escorts and Mondeos around older than that. The interval was increased due to the low failure rate.
You've been lucky ;-)
OTOH, stepson's T5 has been off the road for a fortnight having suffered turbo failure. Glad he's not paying for it. The total bill will be close to
2k!
It depends on how they are treated.
I had a good look round a C-Max when they were released and it didn't seem inferior to my seven-year-old Focus in respect of the quality of the interior. Nothing has broken so far!
That's not the point though, is it? An idler that only lasts 40k and 5 years is just s**te regardless of the service interval.
Or engineered to exacting engineering tolerances ;-)
Admittedly it's not great, but if that's the interval, you can't really complain.
I'll have to remember that next time I fail to build any contingency into anything :-)
Yes I can. Just did. See previous postings. :-)
Doesn't the time versus mileage interval apply because of the deterioration of the 'belt 'material..cracking, oil impregnation etc?
Surely in theory irrespective of length of time, shouldn't something like a mechanical idler be designed to easily last 100,000 miles?
The one on my 16 year old diesel Astra was still fine even after 130,000 miles, but because I was replacing the belt I replaced it and the water pump as a matter of course anyway.
Quite often the tensioning bits hare perisable rubber and plastic parts, which is why they're usually part of the belt change kit.
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