hacker-pschorr

Every car I've seen, be it an Audi, Porsche, VW etc... with a broken timing belt had something else in the system fail first. Either the water pump locked up, roller broke etc....

What kind of Ferrari did you see goes on a 9 year timing belt interval? The 348/355/360 owners change out the belt every 3-5 years (and everything the belt touches) reguardless of mileage.

cb951

Just a quick note about Gates Rubber --
I used to be in the parts business and for a while I ran a small store. I carried Gates belts and hoses, and they have a pretty good reputation and track record in the aftermarket parts business. When it was time to do the timing belts, etc. on my 951 which I had just bought used with about 40k on the odometer, I added them to my Gates stock order. My Gates rep stopped in (coincidentally), so I asked him what he thought about using Gates timing belts in my car. He (without hesitation) told me to send them back and to get some factory belts. Said that Gates probably didn't keep up with the factory updates/improvements which occurred several times throughout the early '90s. Why take a chance?

And that was from the Gates sales rep who normally pushed Gates quality. My point is that, while Gates sales and "technical" info stress quality and engineering, the "real deal" is something less, at least for high performance applications like Porsche and Ferrarri. So, I would tend to disregard anything Gates says about these types of applications, and look toward OE suppliers for info regarding their products. And, of course, you can rely on RL and other Porsche forums.

Tom R.

I read it in sports car market a while back. Sheehan in his monthly column mentioned that gates who makes the belts said their belts for a ferrari were made to last 9 years. This was a recent quote from gates. not sure what they did to make them last 9 years.

hacker-pschorr

Ok, Gates says 9 years, yet Ferrari is telling people 3. Yea, sounds about right

Even with the Ferrari's, every broken timing belt came down to something else failing taking out the belt. IMO the term "timing belt" is just short for "everything on the front of the motor".

The problem is with lazy or mis-informed mechanics who only replace the belts. How long do you expect a roller to last? It's spinning twice as fast (if not faster) then the motor with a fixed amount of grease installed.

When I purchased my 944S it had a weeping water pump (back in 96). The lot with the car "offered" to replace the pump for free (how nice). I asked about the belt and the rollers: "No, you just re-use the belt, the rollers are fine..." I bought the car anyway and took it to a real shop for the job.

Yummybud924

i'm getting my timing belt stud replaced soon and bought a new belt to install also.

my belts and water pump / rollers are 2 years old and have like 15k kms on them not much but I thought might as well replace the tbelt when replacing the stud.


I use the Gates powergrip belt which is the OE belt on paragon vs aftermarket contitech.

I think the Gates belt is a better quality belt than the contitech but I'm not sur eif it makes a real difference.


I also agree that a tbelt failure is likely caused by a roller failure or something else unless the tbelt is crazy old or soaked in oil.



Also from talking to a porsche mechanic he said that most of the tbelt failures he had seen were from really old belts and the belt usually strips the teeth and doesn't asctually break.

Yummybud924

also on most newer vehicles now tbelts are to be replaced at like 100k intervals so the rollers last that long also.

hacker-pschorr

I had a new timing belt on my 928 when the oil pump locked up. It stripped 1/2 of every tooth off the belt, still ran (well, started, I didn't run it very long when I saw no oil pressure). Just for the heck of it I checked timing before cutting the belt off, it was 100% accurate. So yes, these are damn strong belts.