Wet belts

[camerart]

Car salesmen aren't interested in you or indeed the products they sell.......all they want is their commission, nowt else!

It seems Peugeot and Citroen have much of the market for high roof vans, there's the Merc Sprinter of course......depends on your budget!
John

Hi B,
I bought a new Toyota Corolla car derived van, and still under guarantee the screen 'went'. It needed a reset password, which must be somewhere, and I had tried 3x suggestions. I took it to the dealership, where I get it serviced and told them about the screen was faulty, and had 9x attempts left, don't use them all up or the screen needs replacing. They used up all 9, and told me the screen's faulty, £90 please. I said it's still under guarantee, but had to pay to get the keys. I told them they're wasting both our times, and contacted Toyota, where they gave me my £90 back. What a fiasco!
C

 

[Avocet]

Guy Martin had an opinion.
He seemed to think it's unburnt fuel getting in the oil degrading belts.
That's the most interesting comment I've heard.
Drive hard and you burn all the fuel and no problem.
Driving miss daisy the belt degrades.
Mike Brewer said if you stick to service schedule you won't have a problem. He don't think there is a problem and happy to sell vehicles with a wet belt.

Yes, I've heard the same from a Ford engineer. It's not so much the driving style and burning all the fuel, but the driving style that (if driven like Miss Daisy), leads to more "active" regenerations, rather than "passive". In the active regenerations, a lot more fuel is injected, and some gets past the rings and into the oil. He did also say that the EXACT grade (and Ford specification) of engine oil was absolutely essential, as it has been formulatd to be kind to rubber.

 

[Avocet]

Spawn of the devil and the bean counters. Change the oil every 10k or annually, use decent oil, change the belt when due or otherwise avoid.

No the bean counters don't like them - costs them a lot under warranty! On average, a wet belt will reduce CO2 emissions by about 1% because of the reduced friction. That's what's driving this. It shows how absolutely desperate manufacturers of ICE engines are getting for CO2 reductions now.

 

[aveatry]

Yes, I've heard the same from a Ford engineer. It's not so much the driving style and burning all the fuel, but the driving style that (if driven like Miss Daisy), leads to more "active" regenerations, rather than "passive". In the active regenerations, a lot more fuel is injected, and some gets past the rings and into the oil. He did also say that the EXACT grade (and Ford specification) of engine oil was absolutely essential, as it has been formulatd to be kind to rubber.

That's why I take my car to the main dealers who use the exact "recipe" oil

 

[Avocet]

The whole wet belt thing was to get engines a particular eco rating

Yes so you have no choice but to adhere to the change times because if you dont and it go's there is no come back.
Consider it a climate tax because by moving the belt inside it got the manufactures an eco label, it made the engine more efficient. Also along with this some of the engines - the puretec used "low friction" piston rings which after just 40k miles start to burn oil -- that's right eco piston rings burning oil.
Feel scammed yet.

No, there's no "scam". The car manufacturers don't like it any more than you do! It's a regulatory penalty under the UK's New UK Car and Van CO2 Regulations:

Total UK fine for exceeding the limits (which ratchet down each year) are:

£86 X (Average fleet CO2 - Target CO2) X Total number of new cars sold that year.

To put that into context, if Ford sell 400,000 cars and light commercials in the UK this year, and they are 2 grammes per km over their fleet average CO2 target, that's £86 x 2 x 400,000 in fines. (That's nearly £70 million...)

You can change quite a lot of wet belts under warranty for £70M...

The really funny thing, is that the UK's New Car CO2 regs are a copy-and-paste of the EU ones. When we left, Boris Johnson had the brilliant idea of just copying the EU regs, but forgot that under the EU regs, car manufacturers average their entire EU-wide sales to get this figure, whereas Boris made it so that they could only average their UK total sales - because that's what "taking back control" looks like! What he didn't realise, is that in the UK, we love our big, high-CO2 emitting SUVs, pickups, 4x4s etc, whereas across the whole of the EU, there are a lot more sales of small-engined, low-powered, low CO2 small cars - particularly in the poorer Member States and some of the Mediterranean countries.

I think the real question is "are the Brexiteers feeling scammed yet"?

 

[Avocet]

Whatever effin idiot thought that constructing an engine that used a rubber belt made from oil products and then allowing that belt to run through an oil bath really wants his/her head read. Look at the crap that Stellantis and Ford are in now mainly due to the wet belt debacle. I would avoid like the plague.

So would I, but I know some of the engineers concerned, and I know they didn't want to do it either. This is forced on them by regulation.