If the sepentine belt or fan belt stop working, you risk your engine overheating, lose power steering, and your air conditioner may give out. If your timing belt stop working, you risk serious damage to the car’s engine and your car will probably stop running. These electronic devices enable a pick-up located close to the vehicle’s ignition switch to read data in the key and ‘unlock’ the vehicle’s immobiliser system, enabling the vehicle to start when you crank the engine over.Maintaining your serpentine belts, fan belts, and timing belts is incredibly important to the overall health of your car. Modern cars with electronic immobilisers (an anti theft deterrent) have keys which not only control the remote locking and unlocking functions of a car they’re also fitted with electronic transponders which are unique to each key. Getting a replacement set of car keys used to be a fairly simple process, however it is becoming a lot more complicated these days. It's a 'must do' job, just be prepared to spend a little more to reduce unwanted future repeat work.Īlways remember when shopping around for prices to make sure you ask lots of questions from all parties when estimates vary significantly. On average, a cambelt requires replacement every 5 years or 100,000kms whichever comes first. While most manufactures have moved away from cambelts in favour of chain driven engines (to help reduce maintenance costs) there are still plenty of vehicles on our roads still running belts which have a limited life span. When a new belt is fitted and tensioned, it applies load to the old water pump bearing which many garages have discovered doesn't always work. The reality is this: in most belt driven engines, apart from driving the engine camshaft, the cambelt also turns the water pump. Start thinking in thousands of dollars rather than hundreds to sort this problem out! Their refusal to accept liability is based on the fact the cause of the failure was the water pump which resulted in further damage including the broken cambelt. When challenged about the failure a short time after a cambelt replacement, some garages will simply flatly refuse to accept any responsibility. Water pump bearing failure can lead to a broken cambelt which in turn often results in extensive engine damage (valves hitting pistons etc). The second surprise can be a failure of the original water pump after a new cambelt is fitted often with disastrous consequences. Often the 'extras' can stretch a repair by several hundred dollars, a hard pill for many motorists to swallow at the time. In reality, they have little choice but to give the go-ahead and bite the bullet on the extra cost. What does the owner do? The engine is in pieces and the car is immobile. Comments about ensuring a complete job and not being able to guarantee the life of the cambelt if the water pump is not replaced are often used to convince owners to spend more than the original repair estimate. The first surprise is when the customer receives a phone call from the garage saying they have removed the cambelt, the engine is partially dismantled and they would like to replace the water pump. We get to hear about the shortfalls of the cheaper option on a regular basis however as one of two things can and do happen. This obviously drives the total cost of the job upwards significantly in comparison to the cambelt only price, so it's not hard to understand why motorists often take the cheaper option. The more up-front garages will, in most cases, recommend a new water pump is fitted as part of a cambelt replacement job and will provide an estimate accordingly. Smart Charge – Intelligent Battery ChargerĬambelt replacement is never cheap so for all those bill payers who ring around garages to obtain the best price be warned the lowest price is often not the best option.

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