On Wed, 17 Mar 2004, Donald Baxter / Iowa City, Iowa wrote:

> One of the things that concerns me is fragility of the rubber timing belt on
> such a high tolerance engine.  What's the replacement interval for these
> things?  It was 40,000 miles, then 60,000.  I broke a rubber timing belt on
> a 16V gas (at 38,000 miles, mind you) and got lucky--no damage (happened on
> decellaration).  There is no such thing as luck when these things break on a
> diesel given their high compression ratios.

There's no such thing as luck when one breaks on a Honda, either, but
people accept timing belt changes as a maintenance item.  You're going to
see more and more gas engines going to interference designs anyway, due to
emissions requirements.

Keep in mind that most timing belts have a *time* restriction as well as a
milage restriction.  Rubber decays with age, so you can't replace them
strictly by milage.

> Still, if my municipality of Iowa City would enforce our noise regulations
> against motorcycles, specifically our very loud Harley community (and how
> obnoxious are they? Loud pipes don't save lives--but they may just wake the
> dead.) maybe someone around here might get sensitive about diesels.

I'd say that once they're done with the motorcycles, the boomer cars, and
the pickups running straight pipes, then people *might* get interested in
quieting down diesels.

David Brodbeck, N8SRE
'82 Volkswagen Diesel Westfalia
'86 Volvo 240DL wagon