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.
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.
--
*If at first you don't succeed, avoid skydiving.*
Dave Plowman snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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
Mrcheerful wrote (apparently) in uk.rec.cars.maintenance on Sat 26 Sep
2015 14:41:56:
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.
--
MrGuest
Always, seemingly, on the road to nowhere
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.
Oh indeed. But as has been said, some are better than others.
--
*I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.*
Dave Plowman snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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:
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.
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.
100,000 miles likely is a lifetime in terms of maker's warranties.
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?
--
*A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well*
Dave Plowman snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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.
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.
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