Greetings-Looking at upcoming scheduled maintenance on my XC70 and have a question on timing belt. Currently have 136000 miles and first change by original owner was at 96,000. According to owners manual, subsequent changes with my engine VIN are to be done every 45,000.

Thoughts on if that is the right interval for subsequent changes?

Thank you.

My thoughts are that 45,000 miles is a bit short for a timing belt change, but the consequences of a failure are expensive.

Our '04 V70 is something like 120k, but I change it at 70k. Tensioner, and pulley with the belt, water pump every other. My brother's Audi's tensioner failed at about 60k. $5000 in damage.

Greg

Thanks for your quick responses and recommendations. Happy New Year!

Biggest fear of used cars, what was actually changed?

I'd have everything changed, belt, tensioner and pullet. Mine as well do the water pump too since its right there and a good peace of mind. From there I'd change again at 200k. As my indy put it for my '07 S60: "your book says 120k, I've seen your same car have a failed tensioner at 110k, no hurt in doing it a bit early" - so I did, had it all done and the belt was reasonably cracked at 112k, peace of mind now. I will likely have it done at 200k flat just for added peace of mind. Old the car, more miles, more heat and wear and tear IMHO no worries doing it a bit earlier. Sure beats a new top end.

Reason I suggest changing it all, you never know if the previous place took a shortcut and skipped the pulley or idler to save time and bucks.

Best,
Steve

The following is from your maintenance manual:

****Service interval for engine VIN codes 52, 54 and 59 is 120,000 miles or 192,000 kilometers. Service interval after first service for all turbo models is every 45,000 miles / 72,000 kilometers. No service required on engine VIN code 68.
***** Models identified by engine VIN codes 39 & 64 sold in California, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York and Maine are classified as PZEV vehicles. The timing belt and tensioner replacement interval for these vehicles only is 15 years or 150,000 miles / 240,000 kilometers.
Maximum replacement time interval for all engines except engine VIN code # 39 & 64 is 10 years.
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I wonder why the belt/tensioner has less than a half life after first change? That doesn't make sense.

Perhaps the quality of parts is going down.

Volvo is going back to chains - so is Subaru,

My son-in-law is a Subaru tech and they are having ring problems - Frank just figured out a problem that they are having with knocking after a ring job any is getting an award from Subaru.

It seems that their instructions for tensioning the chain by squeezing the chain by hand is insufficiene - he tried using vice-grips to add more force and avoided the knocking that they were getting after reassembly of the engine.