Thread: timing belt

Holy cr*p this is something I did not want to read three weeks before setting off to Cape Leveque with a 58000km belt.

The belt on my Defender went at 80000+ and i believe it was upgraded then. I decided after much praying and offering of sacfrices and asking advice to wait until I get back from Broome to replace the belt again. I was told 80000 to be safe and the upgraded pulley helps longevity a lot. When I get back it will be well less than 70000km.

Having a similar age disco, and investigated the belt issue when I changed mine, I read a lot of threads and other stories from other owners of tdi's world wide. Generally, from their experiences, damage varies from mild to wild, depending on what you were doing at the time. Whip off the rocker cover, and rockers. Mild gets you bent pushrods., and maybe a cracked rocker. If the pushrods are pretzels (- If I find the pic that showed a set, I'll post it - it was amazing) and the rockers are cracked then expect bent vales. There are various ideas on how to test for this, but generally this worked for me: With the piston on the down stroke ( piece of wire down the injector hole?) give the valve a medium, tap with a hammer. If all is (reasonablely) well, you'll hear a nice crisp sound. If somthing is amiss, it'll stick or sound off. Finally, ( and I'm not quite sure how to take readings for this) do a compression test. No compression- killed valves or pistons - you know the rest. It would be intersting to know if your pulleys chewed the side off the belt, and what condition the bearings of the pulleys are like.


Langy