Belts

petercronin

Paid Member
Random question about belts, in particularly the aux belt. What sort of condition would you expect to find the belt in after about three years and 15000 miles?

Yesterday I was in the area and I noticed mine is perished a bit with small cracks and some small chunks missing (small as in a couple of mm or so). It only seems to be on the ribbed side of the belt, the plain side appears ok and the belt itself feels flexible enough.
 
not what you just described...my was replaced after 7 years when i bought it and it looked pretty much new,with some tiny defects...
is this a genuine item??
 
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Thanks guys that’s what I suspected. It’s certainly not looking like it’s about to fall to bits but I’ll get it changed and have a word with the place who did the belts.

@Pav the paperwork claims it’s genuine and up until yesterday I trusted the garage. But I didn’t look at the markings on the belt itself.
 
take the cover off and check it..should give you some idea of what its like..

Is it just the torque arm and a few bolts to get it off? I take it it’s literally just a cover and I’m not going to disturb anything by taking it off?
 
Take the cover off, it won't disturb anything.

Mine looked like New after 24k and 4 years. But the aux was starting to crack.
 
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Full belt change has been done now for peace of mind.

Fortunately the cam belt was fine but it turns out both belts weren’t Renault ones, they were Gates who I believe make the Renault ones anyway. So now onto the original garage....

Thanks for your help guys.
 
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Full belt change has been done now for peace of mind.

Fortunately the cam belt was fine but it turns out both belts weren’t Renault ones, they were Gates who I believe make the Renault ones anyway. So now onto the original garage....

Thanks for your help guys.

The issue with cambelts is they tend to look fine until they don’t (*), you can’t really inspect a cambelts, they look the same after 10000 miles as they do after 50k, even as a mechanic of 12+ years experience I can honestly say that you can say a belts been on longer than say three months but after that it’s fairly impossible to say how worn a belt is or isn’t

* generally when they don’t they have two ends or no teeth left

Best advice is if your not sure and don’t have a receipt that’s verifiable, get em done

If they were Renault genuine belts they will have a Renault diamond in addition to gates markings for future reference if original belts are gates
 
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