09-10-2015, 08:12 PM
On the 1.8, the timing belt interval is 10 years or 100,000 miles - whichever comes first. It's the same for my wife's 1.4 Fiesta, which is the same engine as yours, Ed - just a little bit newer (2003). It's quite scary, but we let hers run to 10 years/45,000 miles with no drama before changing it. I got the one in my Focus done at 5 years because the water pump needed doing - it made sense while it was all apart - and now that 10 years is up, I plan to get it done sometime very soon.
So I wonder what prompted the recommendation you've heard - any ideas what makes low-mileage driving tough on timing belts? Added to which, low mileage means two very different things to our 2 cars - my Focus is used for long runs only, but very, very occasionally, whereas the Fiesta does all the short journeys - so I wonder if the reasoning could/should be applied equally to both?
I used to change timing belts on my previous cars (old VWs) where everything was very easy to get at. With the Focus (and probably the Fiesta), you have to remove the engine bracket while supporting the lump somehow. At this point, I decided that it's time to stop servicing my own cars
Yes, I was a bit shocked when I read about the taper-fit on the pulleys. By all accounts, that's very common today. From memory, the crank is keyed and the cams are taper jobs on my 1.8 - I've never looked up the detail for the 1.4/1.6 variants. Either way, all my previous cars were keyed, and they had markings on the pulleys and brackets with pointers to indicate the positions, so changing a belt really was trivially easy. Happy days...
So I wonder what prompted the recommendation you've heard - any ideas what makes low-mileage driving tough on timing belts? Added to which, low mileage means two very different things to our 2 cars - my Focus is used for long runs only, but very, very occasionally, whereas the Fiesta does all the short journeys - so I wonder if the reasoning could/should be applied equally to both?
I used to change timing belts on my previous cars (old VWs) where everything was very easy to get at. With the Focus (and probably the Fiesta), you have to remove the engine bracket while supporting the lump somehow. At this point, I decided that it's time to stop servicing my own cars
Yes, I was a bit shocked when I read about the taper-fit on the pulleys. By all accounts, that's very common today. From memory, the crank is keyed and the cams are taper jobs on my 1.8 - I've never looked up the detail for the 1.4/1.6 variants. Either way, all my previous cars were keyed, and they had markings on the pulleys and brackets with pointers to indicate the positions, so changing a belt really was trivially easy. Happy days...
