BEW 186k miles, original t-belt!! ....is this a record?

jimbote · Dec 2, 2013

Just picked up a craigs find 05' golf today with just over 186k miles with the original timing belt and it's not stripped or broken!!... PO bought the car in 06' with just over 30k ....and he swears up and down it's never been replaced.... I peeked under the cover and the belt looks tired plus the tamper paint is still in place on the cam sprocket bolts....just didn't think a PD could go that far on the original belt....

oilhammer · Dec 2, 2013

Nah. My record was 192k on an ALH. I had a CBEA in here not long ago with 185k, but that isn't as big of a dive into the lucky side of stupid.

jimbote · Dec 2, 2013

oilhammer said:
Nah. My record was 192k on an ALH. I had a CBEA in here not long ago with 185k, but that isn't as big of a dive into the lucky side of stupid.

Yikes...I thought the y2k NB with 155k that came in for a trans swap that had the original 40k belt was bad

...belt was cracked badly and there were little nylon puffballs packed under the cover from the belt fibers breaking down...it was still running but I wouldn't let him drive it back to FL without it being replaced....I was nervous just pulling it back into the shop

Jake_S · Dec 3, 2013

My 05 Jetta wago is at 183k total miles and 83k on the second timing belt. I'm getting nervous about it lasting until 200k. I guess I worry to much.

Jake

jimbote · Dec 3, 2013

Jake_S said:
My 05 Jetta wago is at 183k total miles and 83k on the second timing belt. I'm getting nervous about it lasting until 200k. I guess I worry to much.

Jake

seems to be a consensus on the forums that the PD belts should be changed now at 80k as some have failed just after....

TDI smile · Dec 3, 2013

It's just LUCK and a sign, that the owner did not look after the car. Who knows what else was not done. But it looks like the car is now in good hands.

jimbote · Dec 3, 2013

TDI smile said:
It's just LUCK and a sign, that the owner did not look after the car. Who knows what else was not done. But it looks like the car is now in good hands.

It's in need of a lot of catchup maintenance... PO is a graduate student at duke on stipend so he didn't have the extra cash to throw at it....plus it's a tip auto and it hangs in first until it warms up, I'm going to swap out valve bodies and give it go before swapping to a manual...overall I would say it's in fair shape...interior is a bit dirty, and it has a few dents and dings but it may make a good car for the girlfriend

barrettg · Dec 5, 2013

We just recently had a BRM with 176k miles on the original and a rattling DMF that you could barely talk over. I told him he was our luckiest customer by far. I was scared pulling it into the shop.

pleopard · Dec 5, 2013

According to the local dealer, I'm on borrowed time at 85,000 miles on my 2010. To make matters more ridiculous, they thought the odometer was in km when they stated that. Supposedly the cold weather is "very hard on the belts" and they've seem them failing.

rotarykid · Dec 5, 2013

I vote we give the previous owner the darwin award////.....

Kevinski4 · Dec 5, 2013

barrettg said:
We just recently had a BRM with 176k miles on the original and a rattling DMF that you could barely talk over. I told him he was our luckiest customer by far. I was scared pulling it into the shop.

Over a year ago (last Oct) I had a BRM come in on a hook with a dead alternator. I replaced it and immediately noticed the DMF hammering away. It was so bad it echoed between my two buildings that are 50 yards apart. I gave the guy an estimate and warned him about the pending doom. Never heard back. The same car came back for bad glowplugs last week. I heard the car coming. Still running the same DMF.

Ol'Rattler · Dec 6, 2013

rotarykid said:
I vote we give the previous owner the darwin award////.....

Why? Apparently, he sold the car before Darwin could do his job. If anything, he should be congratulated on remaining in the gene pool.

Ol'Rattler · Dec 6, 2013

pleopard said:
According to the local dealer, I'm on borrowed time at 85,000 miles on my 2010. To make matters more ridiculous, they thought the odometer was in km when they stated that. Supposedly the cold weather is "very hard on the belts" and they've seem them failing.

All I can say is why are you still letting a stealership maintain your car?

A guy posted here that his stealership wanted to replace his steering rack for something like $2500 because the steering was misbehaving and throwing some codes and the red steering light was on. It turns out his car had a ground that had worked loose. The owner tightened the loose ground and all his steering problems vanished........

A service writers job is to sell, sell, sell and if they, as a service writer, are an imbecile and many of their customers are clueless, then a lot of parts get changed needlessly.

The real downside of this is that if the tech that works on your car is an imbecile as well, then your car may be destroyed by the tech replacing parts on your car and not following procedure.

Ol'Rattler · Dec 6, 2013

About MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure)

Something you have to understand about T/B's and service intervals is that the manufacturer understands that under no circumstance should a T/B ever fail because of the catastrophic nature of a timing failure.

So what they do is take into consideration all possible failure modes of a timing system and base the replacement interval conservatively on that.

In most but not all cases, you could probably go twice the recommended interval, but if you go past the recommendation, the possibility of a catastrophic timing failure starts becoming more probable.

Ol'Rattler · Dec 6, 2013

jimbote said:
seems to be a consensus on the forums that the PD belts should be changed now at 80k as some have failed just after....

No, It is VOA's updated recommendation for the BRM.

Originally, the VOA recommendation was for 100K miles, but VOA changed it to 80K miles because of that MTBF thing. I changed my T/B at 88K miles and the T/B and associated parts looked like they would have easily made it to 150K miles.

So ya, out of a thousand, one might fail at 60K miles were as the mileage goes up the failure rate will become higher and higher. They are just trying to pick a replacement interval that has the least amount of warranty claims because of catastrophic failure.

rotarykid · Dec 6, 2013

In Europe on all PDs the recommended change interval is every 80k miles with a maximum of 4 years with no regard to miles.

paramedick · Dec 6, 2013

Ol'Rattler said:
No, It is VOA's updated recommendation for all PD engines.

Fixed that for you........

pleopard · Dec 7, 2013

Ol'Rattler said:
All I can say is why are you still letting a stealership maintain your car?

A guy posted here that his stealership wanted to replace his steering rack for something like $2500 because the steering was misbehaving and throwing some codes and the red steering light was on. It turns out his car had a ground that had worked loose. The owner tightened the loose ground and all his steering problems vanished........

A service writers job is to sell, sell, sell and if they, as a service writer, are an imbecile and many of their customers are clueless, then a lot of parts get changed needlessly.

The real downside of this is that if the tech that works on your car is an imbecile as well, then your car may be destroyed by the tech replacing parts on your car and not following procedure.

The answer is simple. There are no independent shops here that are any more competent. I took it to one who charged me $150 only to conclude that I should take it to a dealer... He couldn't diagnose my electrical problem. It took the dealer three days and cost me $2700 but at least they solved the problem.

Tureq · Dec 8, 2013

rotarykid said:
In Europe on all PDs the recommended change interval is every 80k miles with a maximum of 4 years with no regard to miles.

Not true, intervals varies between 90k to 150k kilometers. Some have 5 year maximum time, some don't have maximum time at all. Early b5 passats, which were the first ones in year 2000 or 2001, had only 60kkm timing belts, after first timing belt chance they have had some upgraded parts and interval rose to 90kkm

rotarykid · Dec 8, 2013

I wish I could find the VWAG bulletin out of the UK I found a while back. The bulletin stated that they were downgrading all PD timing belts in the UK from 5 years to 4 years. The downgrading had something to with the heavy stop & go use these cars were seeing in the UK with many of the cars having service contracts that covered maintenance............

And it has always been a mishmash of mileage/kms ratings on service lives of the t-belt system on the PDs from the start. But to try to remove the confusion that was leading to failures most PD cars with the upgraded parts were given the rating range of 130K kms/80k miles......

The mileage rating is a debatable point on some of these but from what I have seen in PDs I would not push that time rating.......

kemalik84 · Nov 13, 2017

186kilometers or miles?

jimbote · Nov 13, 2017

kemalik84 said:
186kilometers or miles?

just like it says in the original post. MILES ... i aint in canada

BEW 186k miles, original t-belt!! ....is this a record?

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