How much attention do you pay to the brand of serpentine belt?
- Thread starter AshleyQuick
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How's that possible? A 98 Accord would have had 2 timing belt jobs by now. Each time that timing belt job was done, someone should have replaced the drive belts?
someone being too cheap to replace other parts with the TB doesn't surprise me at all
(this would've been a good place to use the old ontome smiley)
You can get away with this with Honda. Try it with PT cruiser for extrafun.someone being too cheap to replace other parts with the TB doesn't surprise me at all
(this would've been a good place to use the old ontome smiley)
Here is something to consider . Since the appearance of serpentine belts , I have never ( thank God ) had one break .
In the days of V-Belts , yes .
In the days of V-Belts , yes .
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Yeah you’re right, doesn’t look like outside of safety components there is regulation or oversight. Kind of scary a little bit I guess.
So I’m going to go into the auto belt business. I’m going to them with recycled mountain bike tires and whatever I can find in the corners of my teenage son’s bedroom. Haha
Honestly, I’ve never seen a belt break unless it was from a seized water pump, alternator or idler puller it tensioner. Belts (and especially hoses) has almost become “life of the vehicle, stuff”. I see timing chainsand tension era fail before the darn belt or hoses. I’ll see the clamps on the hoses rot away before the hose will. I was in a class run by Gates. They told us how great their belts were...gave us little gauges to measure belt wear. Because the belts don’t really break anymore, they taught us other ways to sell them to the customer. Slippage. Belt slippage due to wear may cause (on occasion) phantom check engine lights and cause alternator output to struggle/drop (causing electrical issues).
You know belt companies are in trouble when they have to start telling you how to upsell a belt. Lol
Depends on how hard it is to change out the belt. I mean, if you have to remove a motor mount to change the belt I am going to be more picky.
After two no name squeekers from rock auto I pay attention.
Michael, this was my folks car and sat in their garage most of the time. After my father passed a year ago January, I gave it to a single Mother. It has about 90K on the clock. The timing belt was done years ago, due to age, not mileage. The alternator belt was somewhat worn; the PS belt was a Bando I believe. The car is perfect and has served Cindy well. It will probably see some of your 5w30 Synthetic oil soon.
Nissan/Infiniti service schedule for my '08 G35X has (3) levels. With the "premium" level, Nissan says to change the serpentine belt every 30k miles ! With the standard service as well as severe, they do not even say to "inspect" the belt.
I've always done Gates for serpentine and V belts both for the simple reason that they're a known brand to me and they've never given me any reason to use anything else. I try to do serpentines somewhere around 50K and 80K miles just in case, but every Gates I've pulled off at that interval looked like it could have gone back on(I just hate changing them enough that if I pull it off, I'm putting a new one in its place).
As a fun little story on Gates-my barber has a couple of big tokens in his shop that say Gates Belts on them. They came from his dad's garage, which was in business probably from about 1950 to 1990. The story he tells is that a Gates salesman would drive up with something belt-related "wrong" with his car, and if you IDed it quickly and fitted a Gates replacement, they'd hand you one of these coins(plus of course paying for the job). Don't know if it's true or not, but it's a fun story about how the tokens came about.
As a fun little story on Gates-my barber has a couple of big tokens in his shop that say Gates Belts on them. They came from his dad's garage, which was in business probably from about 1950 to 1990. The story he tells is that a Gates salesman would drive up with something belt-related "wrong" with his car, and if you IDed it quickly and fitted a Gates replacement, they'd hand you one of these coins(plus of course paying for the job). Don't know if it's true or not, but it's a fun story about how the tokens came about.
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I imagine Nissan would also suggest “upper engine and throttle body cleanings”, every 10,000 miles. Haha.
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I went 170,000 miles on my original serpentine belt in my Lexus LS460. No issues. Only changed it because I figured...well, winter is coming, wouldn’t it be pretty bad if this thing snapped and I was left on the side of the road because I didn’t change a $30 dollar, easy to replace belt.
Honestly, I waited that long because I kept waiting for my water pump to fail (and it never did). I figured I’d just replace the belt when the pump went..
and I didn’t want to change the belt first because I figured when the pump went it would drop cooolant all over the new belt and ruin it. So I bought a “lifetime warranty” serpentine belt. Then I ended up trading the car in 8 months later. All well.
I suspect the 30k change is part of "what can we replace as premium, preventative maintenance that will avoid our customers getting stranded somewhere". I don't remember what else they say to replace at a much lower than standard interval.... No mention of throttle body cleaning though
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I suspect it is “what can we convince people to change if we call it premium?”. Oh, I know! Nitrogen in the tires!! Oh, how about headlight bulb change intervals? Or windshield wiper alignment?I suspect the 30k change is part of "what can we replace as premium, preventative maintenance that will avoid our customers getting stranded somewhere". I don't remember what else they say to replace at a much lower than standard interval.... No mention of throttle body cleaning though
It’s brilliant really. Get your best customers to spend more by placing “premium” or “platinum” next to it. Honestly I don’t know why more manufacturers don’t do it. Usually it’s just normal driving conditions or harsh driving conditions that differentiates service intervals. Infiniti is on to something.
In my experience Driveworks belts are reboxed Dayco Drive Rite belts which is their cheaper line. I've had no issues with them.
Yeah I changed my belt because... It had so many miles on it. I did go to the dealership and get another serpentine belt. $48. I figured if that belt was that good... I may has well pay the additional $24 because it obviously held up extremely well. I am not fooling with it until I get to 350,000 to 360,000 miles.
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