Serpentine Belt Life

How long did you run your stock serpentine belt? I’m at 115K miles and was thinking of changing it soon but it looks fine, no cracks. It’s very wide compared to any other vehicles I’ve owned.

 

This is funny. I was thinking the same thing recently. I'm at 126K. I bought a new one a few months ago and it's been in the back seat waiting for me to get motivated. Or, until it breaks and I have to fix it road-side.

 

The rule of thumb is to change them every 100k miles. So you don't see any cracks, but do you hear any squealing when you start the engine?

I'd air on the side of caution and replace it before it pops off and leaves you stranded somewhere.

 

Modern belts supposedly erode, so you'd need a comb-shaped profile gauge:
https://dayco.com.au/databank/documents/How-To-Identify.pdf

10 years / 100k is a good round number with safety margin. A failed belt whipping around can cause significant collateral damage. This is for on-pavement use. Frequent mudding will kill the idler pulleys quicker, at which point you should probably replace the belt too.

The factory belt on mine was on the verge of failure when I bought it at 138k: https://www.4runners.com/posts/438971

 

My Sorento’s was fine at the time of it’s sale at something like 7 yr/130k miles, my friend’s Civic was, to reference a certain rusty old boat hitch, “barely hanging on” at around 9 yr/120k so YMMV.

 

Mine doesn’t have any little cracks like that yet… At this point I’ll probably wait until spring since unless we get some decent weather in the next couple weeks.

 

Pretty amazing compared to the old v belts that would be worn and squealing at 60K.

 

I changed mine at 160,000.
However, at 200k which I should reach soon, I will change all the original pulleys and the tensioner and change the belt again simply because I am there.
But 100k is a good interval to do it.

 

LMAO, I did the exact same thing.

It's at 184k, I've owned it since 79k and don't know if it's ever been changed. I took a look at it a few weeks ago and it looks fine.

 

That's a good point, actually. My brother had a Mazda 6 about 10 years ago and the belt failed, causing all kind of other damage. I don't remember the exact details, but I think it damaged the harness. The car was never right after that, all kind of weird electrical problems here and there.

 

The timing belt on my '03 was still hanging on at 230+K miles. It was in bad shape, but didn't break.... thank God!

 

I only got to 73,000 on mine which was quite surprising They are easy to change though.

 

Serpentine belt is very cheap insurance. Shoot, at 60k I would recommend replacement depending how it looks. Why gamble on a $30-$50 part?

It's too critical, will leave you stranded if it fails.

 

I like to go with the if it isn’t broke don’t fix it mentality. Plus I have too many other projects and hobbies going on to waste time unnecessarily.

 

There's the guy with the salvage TRD Pro who kept driving after the engine overheated, to the point of melting the oil pickup inlet...