Big trip tomorrow to take my daughter to Disneyland so I decided to check the car while she spent the day with friends. My timing belt had 35k on it and I was thinking I would go to 40k since I read that Gates recommended 45k. I decided to take the cover off and look to be sure. Well I was shocked to see about 5 teeth with only half a tooth left. So I removed everything and there were two other sections one with 4 half teeth and another with 6 missing, I mean gone, teeth.

I am glad I caught it before the trip but kind of humbled that I thought I could cheat on the 30k replacement.

so anybody want to help me get if back together tomorrow morning. I am going to have to hustle and get belts early and get it back together. I still want to make my reservations tomorrow night in Anaheim.

Anyway, I will be sticking to the recommended 30k from here on.

 

Amazing. I change them at 60k km's intervals, which is pretty close to 35k miles, I thought this was a safe interval until now...

 

Nice catch! Who's this Gates guy? That's way too high, unless you're feeling rich and lucky.

 

How many years old is the belt?

 

Properly tensioned? It's very unusual to have that kind of wear all over the belt like that unless something was amiss.

 

The belt was 17 months old. I had it retensioned properly at about 1500 miles. I checked the tension at 18k and everything was ok. I hadn't looked at it for some months. I had some extra time on Monday and I am very glad I did. If this had happend to me again, (16 smashed valves) I would have, well I don't know what I would have done but it would not have been pretty.

I couldn't get a belt this morning so I took (edit:towed) it into Modderman's here in Mtn. View. They had me back on the road by 2 so my daughter and I made it down to Anaheim with no problems.

Gates Rubber Company Peckster, they now make the belts for Porsche. Arnworx has a page from the Gates factory manual on his website that says the change interval is 45k. The belt that came off my car was a Conti.

I was out in the alley behind my townhouse this morning and just happend to find one whole tooth and one half tooth of my belt lying on the ground! I must have been very close to disaster. I do agree that there may be some mis alignment or wear on the rollers, cam sproket or crank pulley that is causing more wear than usual. Tensioned with spring tensioner and it was ok when I checked. I will be paying more attention at every 5k from now on.

 

Conti > Gates

 

If I were Gates I'd be recommending replacement every oil change!

You should let them know this is a problem. Let us know what they say!

 

Must've been the Georgia model. . .

 

Huh...weird. I just changed my belts at 40k and saw only minimal wear on the timing belt (the balance belt was much worse). My guess is that something else was contributing to the belt condition.

 

17 months is a pretty short period of time and 35k is well within reason. Something went wrong here.