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Really Confused - Fiesta Zetec 1.25

The Mrs has just had back from the local garage her 1998 fiesta, darned thing kept overheating and losing water. Solution raised was the water pump, ok Fine. Change it...."oh, the belt will need doing as well" guy says. Hmm, ok cambelt, prolly good time to do it at 60k.

Quoted £200 to £250 for the work. (Eeek) I have in my hand the bill for £121 inc VAT.

So wtf is up with that? He said to the mrs he didn;t need to do the cambelt, just the alternator belt???

I'd assumed that the big long rubbery thing that went round everything on this little car done 'everything' and a cambelt WAS that bit.

Am I wrong or did we just get ourselves a bargain?

TIA for any comments and advice

Dan.

Reply to
Dan
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the timming belt isnt visible, its behind a cover the belt you can see is a serpentine belt, it runs the alternator,power steering pump ect ect. did he charge you £121.00 just to change that belt ? bloody expensive if he did !!!

Reply to
reg

Read it again..... that price includes replacing the waterpump, which, I'm assuming, isn't run off the cambelt on that engine.

Reply to
SteveH

In message , Dan writes

There are two belts, the cambelt and the accessory drive belt. Its the accessory drive belt that drives the water pump so that's what they have changed. £121 for a water pump, accessory belt and labour doesn't seem unreasonable.

The cambelt has a scheduled life of 100k miles so the garage was right not to change it at 60k. Having said that, it might be a good idea to change it a bit earlier ........say 80k miles.

Reply to
Paul Giverin

"reg" wrote in news:dsgcc0$usp$ snipped-for-privacy@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk:

On a lot of cars, the waterpump is driven by the cambelt, so you have to change it at the same time as the pump. Your waterpump is seperate from the cambelt, but the mechanic may not have realised this when he quoted you the higher price. No bargain, but it's good that he was honest and reduced the price after doing the job, instead of ripping you off by charging the original quoted price.

Reply to
Stu

id agree with changing it early, we've had 2 instances regarding a timing belt let go early, it wasn't so much the belt it was the idler pulleys braking up that caused all the damage !

Reply to
reg

Many thanks for the replies, I didn't realise the cambelt was hidden.

Thanks again.

Dan.

Reply to
Dan

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