Has anyone heard of a 100,000 mile cambelt for a Transit Diesel 2.5 (T/99)? I bought the van a year ago (ex-BT) - claims this 100K belt was installed - just wanted confirmation a belt with that kind of lifespan existed.
TIA.
Ford ETIS
Transit 2.5 Diesel 08/98 - 08/00: Camshaft drive belt, tensioner and idlers: Every 50 000 miles/5 years - Renew
The lifespan varies depending on who you ask, what data you look at, and what belt/tensioner was fitted.
But certainly BT fitted the modified tensioner and belt to all vehicles, with the service schedules changed to 100k/10year at fords advice. And certainly I've never seen any of the modifed belts/tensioners fail, unlike ford's previous attempts at solving the cam belt snapping problem.
Is the tensioner different to take up slack? My experience is that the belt stretches or wears and becomes loose. Mine failed just before it's 60k belt change interval with stripped teeth rather than a break. Thankfully I only had a bent push rod and broken rocker.
They changed the tensioner from the original manual one (used a spring to tension it, but it was then bolted solid), to an automatic tensioner, along with a modified timing belt. But the timing belt would only fit the newer engines, as it was slightly wider, and the crankshaft pulley wasn't wide enough on the early engines.
The problem was the belts slackened slightly, which meant on any abrubt gear changes the belt would try and jump the pulleys, but wouldn't quite make it and you'd normally get a clean snap. Most failures I seen the belts had snapped, but you'd get the occastional one that stripped the teeth. Even with the new tensioner, we still occasionally get one that the timing would jump on (the worst I seen was 6 teeth out on the cam shaft),which led to bad starting/running, but we've never seen one fail.
Something worth mentioning is that the automatic tensioner shouldn't be fitted to the fly-by-wire turbo engines. If you fit the automatic tensioner on them, the timing moves out suffiecently caused by the extra 'spring' in the belt, to cause the engine management to log a timing fault and go into limp home mode.
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