993Porsche

Getting close to 26K miles on my alternator belt. Does Porsche have a recommended maint schedule?


Ken

b5audia4

I would do by years since the rubber belt can crack with age.

Mine actually broke recently, but luckily got it home. I am no mechanic, but was able to replace all the belts following the DIY on Pcar.com.

David in LA

I just replaced mine...the last time it was replaced was less than 4k miles ago but it was close to 3 years ago and were cracked due to age and heat...it's not just a wear from use issue.

trophy

I do mine yearly as part of my preventative maintenance. My car is predominatley a track car so it does spend lots of time near the redline.....

NightFlyer

Have any of you guys used the Contitech belts? I just had mine replaced and that's what my mechanic replaced my old belts with.

Mike J

I only use factory belts, there have been several rennlisters whose ECU picked up erroneous misfires with non-Porsche belts.

Cheers,

Mike

Steve Weiner-Rennsport Systems

FWIW,....use factory belts only!!!!!!!

Aftermarket ones create a myriad of OBD-2 issues that will drive you nuts.

ironimages

Thanks,

Mike and Steve this is good information to have as I will do the belt replacement on my car this winter.

AOW162435

As a humorous aside, I replaced all of the stock, original belts on my 2001 4Runner at 171,000 miles. And they were still servicable.

I purchased the truck new.


Andreas

tj90

I just replaced my OEM belt after 4k miles and 1 year of service!!! The belt was starting to shred on the edge. It did not look good. Belt tension checked out good and I have the pulley update so I dont know why it did not last long. My alternator was sent into Porsche for warranty so maybe that had something to do with it.

need a 993

Could someone explain why something as seemingly innocuous as a belt would trigger OBD II problems?

AOW162435

I'm in the same camp. None of the explainations have ever resonated with me.

This solution is on my short list:











Andreas

NightFlyer

Steve,
Would these non-factory belts cause problems with an OBD-1 car? How hard is it to replace these belts? I looked on the Pelican website and they sell the Contitech belts as an alternative to the factory ones. If it isn't too difficult I would change them myself though to the factory ones.

BSL

Belts are pretty straight-forward to replace. When I did mine, the thing that took the longest was fishing out a shim that I dropped down in the engine tray. If not for that, it would have taken about 15 minutes (my tool kit doesn't have the triple square, so I had to work a bit that was almost too long in...).

black ice

Think beyond maintenance interval and eyeball your belt periodically. A correctly tensioned v belt with healthy alt and fan bearings will last a long time. Very very small cracks on the side of the belt are okay, but if you see big cracks, heat builds up there and chunks of the belt will eventually fall off. If any part of the cover is delaminating or fraying, that's another very bad sign.

I think the Porsche maintenance schedule did not say to change it, but rather to check it every 30K miles. Seems like a long interval...

dave