I m considering buying a 1994 w/29500 miles. Is the timing belt changed according to years old or mileage? How many years or miles as it applies?
Thanks
Thanks
When to change timing belt?
- Thread starter tewills
- Start date
years. 94 is 8(or 9) years old so it's due.
It was due back in the year 2000!
The recommendation from Acura is to change the timing belt after 90,000 miles or 6 years, whichever comes first.
If you exceed either of those recommendations, you are doing so at your own risk. Maybe the timing belt will be fine; maybe it will fail and cause extensive engine damage, many times what the timing belt replacement costs. There's no way to be sure.
If you have a low-mileage car, you may be willing to extend the time interval, even though that's not recommended by Acura. So then the question becomes, how far are you willing to extend it? On a '94, you're driving around with an eight-year-old timing belt. Are you willing to extend it that far? Are you going to drive on it for another two years, when it's ten years old? It's your choice.
Replacing the timing belt (and water pump, which is normally done at the same time) costs around $1200 or so. If you change it every six years as recommended, that's $200/year. If you change it every eight years, that's $150/year, which saves you $50/year. If you change it every ten years instead of eight years, it saves you another $25/year, which is less, while the chances of failure in the ninth or tenth year are undoubtedly higher than in the previous two years. Over time, the savings from continuing to put it off go down, while the risk of failure goes up. At what point is the risk of a failure worth it to you to avoid?
Your decision...
[This message has been edited by nsxtasy (edited 01 November 2002).]
If you exceed either of those recommendations, you are doing so at your own risk. Maybe the timing belt will be fine; maybe it will fail and cause extensive engine damage, many times what the timing belt replacement costs. There's no way to be sure.
If you have a low-mileage car, you may be willing to extend the time interval, even though that's not recommended by Acura. So then the question becomes, how far are you willing to extend it? On a '94, you're driving around with an eight-year-old timing belt. Are you willing to extend it that far? Are you going to drive on it for another two years, when it's ten years old? It's your choice.
Replacing the timing belt (and water pump, which is normally done at the same time) costs around $1200 or so. If you change it every six years as recommended, that's $200/year. If you change it every eight years, that's $150/year, which saves you $50/year. If you change it every ten years instead of eight years, it saves you another $25/year, which is less, while the chances of failure in the ninth or tenth year are undoubtedly higher than in the previous two years. Over time, the savings from continuing to put it off go down, while the risk of failure goes up. At what point is the risk of a failure worth it to you to avoid?
Your decision...
[This message has been edited by nsxtasy (edited 01 November 2002).]
Nice math, but it doesn't work as well when you won't be keeping the car for ten more years... your buying a nine year old car and will presumably upgrade before ten more years...
Well, that depends on how long you expect to keep it. If you expect to keep it for less than six years, you only have to do it (and pay for it) once, whether you do it now or two years from now - so it doesn't cost you any extra to do it now rather than wait. But if you wait, and the timing belt fails and causes $10,000 of damage to the engine, that's $10,000 out of your pocket because you were delaying on doing a $1200 maintenance item.
You can evaluate the risk for yourself - the cost of doing it vs not doing it, the cost of a belt failure vs the cost of it not failing, etc. If you're lucky, you might come out $1200 ahead. If you're not, you could come out way, way behind. How lucky do you feel, driving around with a timing belt that's nine years old?
Saxon34
Guest
It seems that $1200 for a rather simple job like replacing a timing belt is a bit much. I understand that this is NSX we are talking about, but is it really that expensive to do it? What makes it so darn expensive?
Hmmm... Sounds like you've never done one.
It takes a lot of labor to gain access to the timing belt. Check out the procedure in the service manual (page 6-23 in the '91 manual) and you'll see exactly what it entails.
That's why the water pump is usually replaced at the same time; the extensive labor to change the timing belt is almost exactly the same as the labor to change the water pump. So even though the water pump might keep going, you may as well do them both at the same time and only do all the labor once instead of twice if you wait for it to fail.
Also, $1200 includes the cost of the timing belt as well as the water pump.
If you think that this is a simple job, then I encourage you to do it yourself. You might change your opinion...
[This message has been edited by nsxtasy (edited 02 November 2002).]
