Ford Fiesta 08 1.6 petrol Ghia

On 26/09/2015 09:34, Adrian wrote:
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Surely, there must be a way of sensing an approaching timing belt failure. Just that someone hasn't done it yet.

On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 12:33:31 +0100, johannes wrote:
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Or you could just replace it on a precautionary basis, on time/mileage.

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Use chains or gears. Much less risky.

On 26/09/2015 13:35, SteveH wrote:
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They all fail, but gears or chains are much more difficult to replace.

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Properly designed, chains and gears can easily outlast the life of a car - it's not unheard of for Alfa twin-cams to be on a few hundred thousand miles on the original chain - and Honda's gear driven V4 bike engines similarly last for silly mileages with no timing gear maintenance.

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The answer would be to require it to be easy to replace the cam belt. No nonsense like having to remove the engine. It is an external drive, so perfectly possible.
Or require all makers to have a maximum figure for replacement. Say 50 quid. That would concentrate their minds.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
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What authority would be able to make those demands?
The last cam-belt I had done on my Focus increased the running costs over 10 years by 39 pence a week - hardly a significant amount!
Chris

On 26/09/2015 14:34, Chris Whelan wrote:
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Many people do not consider car maintenance costs in any way when budgeting. Every expense comes as a massive shock.

On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:41:56 +0100, Mrcheerful wrote:
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On 26/09/2015 14:55, Adrian wrote:
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That's when they come to sell the car. Why sell a perfectly good car :)

johannes wrote:
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A 'perfectly good' car is *not* one that hasn't been properly maintained!
Chris

Mrcheerful wrote (apparently) in uk.rec.cars.maintenance on Sat 26 Sep 2015 14:41:56:
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I've waited until now to decide what to do as there was a chance my financial situation would be slightly better than it is. It's MoT test time in any case so the car also needs a service, which I had set aside money for.

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Well, the US demanded that all car diagnostics (as regards emissions) had to be able to be read using the same equipment. Something I'll bet the makers hated.
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Oh indeed. But as has been said, some are better than others.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
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Yes, but that's quite a leap to determining a maximum charge for a service item.
BTW, I bet VW now wish that the US authorities had demanded sight of all ECU code in order to check for irregularities...
Chris

On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 15:50:35 +0100, Chris Whelan wrote:
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Indeed.
Especially if the figure in mind is so low that you can't even buy the parts for a common and simple engine for it, let alone pay for one hour's labour at an out-of-London independent garage.

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I've no idea of the cost to change any cam belt, as I've never owned a car with one.
So substitute the figure for a maximum time.

On 27/09/2015 10:45, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
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How about there was a lifetime guarantee , changes by the makers agents at the recommended intervals are free, failures in between are repaired free. I can see the manufacturers flocking to support that idea.

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100,000 miles likely is a lifetime in terms of maker's warranties.
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My idea was to stop them making them so difficult to change in some cases. Perhaps the same should apply to bulbs too. And the easy way for this is to hit them in the pocket. Unless you're saying it's impossible to design an easy to change cambelt?

On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 13:31:30 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
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It certainly is for Vauxhall...

On 26/09/2015 15:42, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
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They hated it so much that they had to define TWO SAE standards for OBDII in 1996. One for FORD SAE J1850 PWM and a different one for GM SAE J1850 VPW.
Europe had 2 more standards. ISO 9142-2 ISO 14230
It wasn't until 2008 that they mandated CAN bus protocol ISO 15765-4 making a 5th standard, still on the same old 16 pin socket.
Ford have 2 separate CAN bus interfaces on the ODBII 16 pin plug, these run at different speeds. Because of this many (Chinese rip off) ODBII scan tools can't read the fault codes from FORD/MAZDA.
So that's 6 standards, still on the same 16 pin plug.
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Vauxhall dealer was charging over £500 for V6 cam belts 15 years ago. They had the prices on an A4 note by the side door to the showroom. Vauxhall reduced the belt change interval to 40K miles. For 10K miles/pa that is £2.40 per week.
Alfa V6 £795 if you do the lot and many don't make it to the 75K mile change. http://www.autolusso-bournemouth.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id „&Itemid 2
If driven by the cam belt a sized water pump is a prime cause for physical belt failure. As others have said many other cam belts suffer failure of things like tensioner / idler pulley.
The next big cost in later life is clutch. On FWD cars this can cost so much that it's not worth it. Clutch life has seen improvements over the years. Early 80's 80K miles was about the limit. Late 80's 100-120K. Some cars are now getting to 140-150K on the original clutch. A £500 charge on a sub £1000 car is really not worth it as the shocks will be next, then lots of chassis bushes.