100K miles... questions

[Hamsterdiesel]

I know that I have a timing belt service coming up...recommended interval is 130K. Are people waiting that long?

Also, I was wondering about when guys are starting to see their stock clutch fail. It seems fine now, I just want to be prepared.

 

[pedroYUL]

Timing belt is not that expensive, unless you don't do it yourself. Yes, the interval is 130k, but all those components have at least 8 years of service already.

Now the clutch is a completely different story, why would you worry about it before hand? Just keep paying attention to DMF failure symptoms, and slippage. My GWS with 135k clutch still seems fine, but then again my wife and I learnt to drive in manuals, we don't ride the clutch, don't dump the clutch...

 

[AverageAndy]

Mine got done at 133K due to a combination of waiting for parts and a good time to take the car out of service. Everything that was removed and replaced, including the timing belt "looked" good, with the exception of the water pump. It had a dried residue coming out of the weep hole -which had me assuming it was soon to fail.

Many have had the water pump fail way before 130K and "get" a full timing belt service at whatever mileage that happens to be.

 

[06bluebeetletdi]

Water pump started leaking at 53,000 miles and 4 years old for my ‘14. Getting ready for the 13 beetle tdi timing belt, I’m at 116k, build date 6/13.

 

[eugene89us]

I changed ours at 120k, and I scheduled next service at 220k miles. I think 100k is plenty long enough, and I agree, most of the time the issue won't be with a belt or idler pulleys, it will be with water pump leaking - either coolant will start leaking or the bearing with start going bad. I had signs of both - minor leak that never showed outside of belt area as well as black droplet that came out of the bearing hole. It was definitely time. I think 100k is a good interval to do it.

 

[IndigoBlueWagon]

I'd do it at 120K as long as the water pump isn't leaking. Clutches seem to be pretty durable, but the throwout bearing/slave cylinders seem to be a failure item, anywhere from 65K miles onward. Since you have to remove the transmission to get to the slave, you may or may not want to replace the clutch at that time, too.