Gulliver

Timing belt went on my very first 944 within the first month of ownership. It had been sitting up outside in a parking lot about a year. Now, it's the first thing I do when I buy one, religiously. Unknown is uninformed.

JohnKoaWood

I consider my T belts part of my annual maintenance on both cars... semi annual on the Audi..

944Ross

I'd assume "mechanical failures" would cover the tensioner sprockets, rollers, etc? I haven't had a failure, but on my two 944's (both of which sat unused for 5 - 7 yrs), both were found to have tensioners and rollers that were long overdue (bearings sloppy and rusty even). Both came with receipts for "belt jobs" within 10k of being parked.

Travis - sflraver

m73m95

Can I thread-jack.... kind of?

No matter what I do, my rollers whine. My car sounds like I have a blower on it.

My old rollers did it, so I changed them with my belt change 2 months ago, and the new rollers do the same.

I tension with the arnworx kit. Is it possible that's not accurate enough, or do all of our cars sound like that? (I've actually never been close to another running 944)

V2Rocket

when i bought my car it had about 66k miles on it. the belt on it was fine when i took it off.

the headgasket however...

Darwantae951

The only time I get a whine is if my balance shaft belt is too tight. Are you sure you're tensioning it correctly? It will feel kinda loose when set at the right tension.

I use the Arnnworx set and have gone thru a few sets of rollers but only ever had a whine when the BS belt was too tight.

m73m95

I'll go check it out ... thank you.

JustinL

Take care of that whining. My only T-belt failure came from a whining roller letting go. I have to admit that the belt I put on after that lasted MUCH longer than belts are supposed to.

Yummybud924

well I change my belt every 3 years and I am going with changing the rollers ever 6 with teh water pump.

3 years ago when I first got the car I changed everything, rollers, belts water pump, oil seals.

so couple months ago I hit 3 years and I just put a new timing belt and balance belt on wihtout changing the rolelrs or anything.

my car also whines pretty loud and the balance belt is pretty loose and was previously tensioned by a porsche shop.


this time I just tensioned my belts myself. I usually pay a 100 bucks to have a shop do it but this time I said screw it as I had metal shavings in my last oil change so I don't think my engine is going to last much longer.

I just used the kricket to do the tensioning. 40 pounds for tbelt.

I think people obsess too much about the tbelts on these cars, as long as you tension the belt so its not too loose to slip or too tight to wreck the rollers you should be fine.

when the shop tensioned my belts I felt them to see how tight they were so I have an idea of how tight they should feel.

I highly doubt that if you overtighten it by a bit or a little too loose you'll get a failure.

i'm worried about the tensioner stud a bit but I bet those failures are pretty rare, I was going to get it changed but like I said my engine is probably going to be toast soon so i'm not going to bother.



I also think the kevlar belt thing is a waste of money. reg timing belts are strong enough, a kevlar belt isn't going to matter if your tensioner failes and loses tension or if a roller explodes.

when I changed my belt after 3 year the belt still looked great and probably could go way longer than that but I chang

billthe3

I was quite surprised to find out that the timing belts are stronger than one would expect. I was driving around with my time belt loose enough to be slapping the covers for a couple of months and when I finally realized what the noise was and got in there to fix it there was no noticable marking on the belt. After retensioning the belt (its now to tight and whining) the noise went away, so I know that it was slapping the covers.

LeftLaneGuy

Mine went with 160k+ on the clock... I'm the 2nd owner, P.O. was a Captain in the Air Force, bought the car in Germany, where it spent the first 4-5 years of it's life. Imported to the USA, where it lived in Co. until I purchased it in '02 Had 130k on it when I got it. P.O. had full documentation and service records, but the service tickets are vague, at best... 'Service'... 'Fluid change'... that sort of nonsense.. From a Porsche dealer... Anyway, the only solid info I had was that @ 38k it had a new motor installed under insurance. Car ingested water while doing a shallow-water intersection. Have the reciepts for the motor.

When the belt failed on me, I had been checking on doing it, just for prevention. I was sitting @ a stoplight, idling. Light turned green, clicked into 1st gear, and before any throttle applied, motor just quit. Didn't sound right, so I inspected things before even pushing the car out of the intersection. Yep, broken belt... $150 tow to the shop, new belt/tensioner/etc... PLUS- New radiator/pump/hoses/t-stat/HEAD/valves etc.. Total of about $3800. New head was required due to 'perforation' and of course, all 8 valves. Luckily, no lower-end damage done. Now it gets checked every 20k... (I have approx 240k on it now)

V2Rocket

going on 3.5 years on a timing belt, tensioned it when i put it on and rechecked it when i had to replace a stripped balance belt that was too tight. no issues.

ilikemy944

My belt is 14 years old.

...almost as old as this thread...

odurandina

w/ 116 k miles on the original belt, I simply blew up the engine instead.


they're all dead, sir.