Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
Has anyone on here had a Honda Civic timing belt brake due to age and not miles? I have never heard of someone with a Civic that had their timing belt brake without it having over 100,000 miles and there are a ton of people with civic's on here, many of them with timing belts that are 10, 15 or even 20+ years old, and it's very rare to even see a civic for sale that has a broken timing belt, so it really seems like it would be bordering on a freak occurrence to have it brake just because it was more then 5 years old.
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When I worked at car repair shop, there was at least one Honda Accord that was very low mileage car, but belt snapped at age of 10 years, was not driven more than 20 000 miles with that belt.
It did snap at startup so not huge damage.
Also there were a lot of timing belt failures, mostly because of age as people were only looking miles (or kilometers as we use here).
Oil seals harden, bushes start to crack, even tires harden and start to crack over time, so why timing belt would not? It sees high temperatures and is under lot of strain even when engine is not running, what would be reason for it to not get bad with age?
Volvo has 4 years (or 160 000-180 000km depending from model), Fiat 3 years, Mitsubishi 5 years, Peugeot 4 years, Honda has 5 years or 100 000km and so on, for many makes initial time and distance has been longer but they have shortened it because of frequent failures.
Now Volvo for some other marketing area has then 120 000km and 8 years, which gives one idea how it depends from area, some places are much more friendlier for belt than others.
If you live in area where temperatures are not so cold, you probably get longer times for belt change as even weaker belt will do the job just fine, but one should be aware of that, so that when taking car to cold area sometime, there will not be unpleasant surprise of belt issues at cold morning startup.
Starting engine at -4F to -40F is bit different than at 60F, something worth to remember before judging time based belt changes to be hysterical.
It is so cheap and simple job that worth learning to do by yourself and do it more often than too late as engine repairing is not going to be cheap.
I did read that new ford has 10 years timing belt change and 200 000km, I doubt that will last, they probably will shorten that to 5-7 years within next 5 years, everyone has been forced to do that so far because our harsh natural conditions.