Aux. belt tale of woe!

[Kev0607]

Originally Posted by canis

Who said I was blaming anyone? I just think you'll get to a figure of £3,600 much more quickly by replacing a ton of stuff prematurely. Seems obvious to me.

I know you haven't blamed anyone, I was using it as a figure of speech. Its your car & your choice of course, but I'd consider yourself to have 'balls' as you put it because its cheaper to replace that belt on your car that's 60,000 miles overdue being replaced than fix potential engine damage caused by it failing, surely? You'd need to replace a fair few aux belts & tensioner's on a D5 engine before you'd spend £3,600, considering genuine parts cost about £120.

Personally, I don't consider premature maintenance to be a bad thing. It all depends on individual circumstances, as in a car that's doing high miles up & down the motorway everyday may get parts replaced prematurely as an example simply because its a work horse & needs to be in good working order. I'm not talking about walking out on your drive one day & just deciding that your car needs a new Clutch when its perfectly fine - That would be a bit over the top. I mean parts that are prone to failure, like timing belts.

I think the key thing to note is that critical components should be replaced, like timing or aux belts when they're due to be replaced, if not before. Having them replaced theoretically reduces the likelihood of failure, although premature failure does occur... We can't predict that though. It would be great if we could!