dlcoffin

So. california 97 ls400 here. pretty sure i'm coming due for new timing belt/water pump, pulleys, all that. my question-- how far is the farthest anyone's ever pushed an old timing belt, in mileage, before caving and replacing it? i'm a sedate driver (51 years old, ha), don't do all the crazy stuff i've seen on this site. all stock. BEFORE grenading the engine. but those that HAVE grenaded their engines because their belts broke, i'm interested in hearing those answers, too. just trying to put together some statistics in my head. i've owned my own car for 6 months, now, give or take, and in all my travels around the Valley, have seen maybe 4 other ls400s on the road. hoping some day there'll be a get together in my area.

RA40

iTrader: (6)

My memory from past discussions the range has been 120K-180K range. Ours has been done close to the 100K mark. The belt, idlers come out looking pretty nice so going a bit over 120K ish seems pretty doable if in good order without to much concern.

The Club Lexus meets have slowed down from past. We'd have the big Longo meet at the Toyota Speedway in Irwindale or the Westminster Lexus meet. Didn't realize that the last Westminster meet was '16, time passes so fast.

dicer

Original timing belt on a 1990 will go about 144,000 miles before it goes. This is a been there done it thing. But then when it goes the engine survives it, where as anything newer than a 1994 will be scrapped out.

dlcoffin

dicer, that's when Lexus went to an interference design, right?

Losiracer2

I'm rocking a Lexus belt on my 99' that was replaced at the dealer in June 2005 @ 90k. I have 149k on it now. Did all the fluids aside from the brake fluid back in Jan. Will most likely do the brake fluid this weekend though since the brakes feel mushy but the pads and rotors don't show a lot of wear. The car was garage kept 100% of the time, in a heated garage, the people I bought it out of lived in a 500-600k house and replaced this with a Tesla so they were well to do. Will that help prolong the life of my belt? maybe. The age does scare me a little bit, but the mileage is at 60k give or take so as far as wear, I should have plenty of life left. At this point, I'm just worried about the crank seal failing, like it did on my 97' 3 yrs ago, so its about at that age, though my 97' had 255k when it failed, so that could be due to wear more than age.

JonnyO78

Honestly, I find timing belts on these so easy I would change it on my 97 if I had even the SLIGHTEST reason to suspect it needed to be replaced. I'm gonna say I can do the job in about 2 hours, 3 tops.

jaaa

95 and up are interference engines.

dlcoffin

JonnyO78 so would i. alas, i am but a poor city apartment dweller. park in the street, and all dat.

spuds

Im impressed,really.

Scraape

i got 180k out of a belt on my 98.

It's more about the age and less about the mileage, IMO.

400fanboy

The belt on my 98' was replaced in 2010. I just did it again a few months ago. It only had ~35,000 miles on it and the car has been garage kept for it's lifetime, but 8 years was enough for me to pull the trigger.

I have an interference motor so better safe than sorry. Thankfully all the cam seals and everything else were all looking good with no leaks.

If you have a 94 or older car, you can get away with pushing the belt much closer to it's failure point because the consequences are far less severe. But with the newer motors, I'd rather not risk grenading the engine just postpone something you'll need to do anyway.

Stereorob

belt on my '95 done 2003 @100k miles via previous owner. just replaced a few months back with 207k

belt on my '99 was replaced last in '07 @97k miles - car now with 198k. have not changed yet but getting nervous so will soon probably

belt on my '00 was never changed. OEM @159k miles. was on pins and needles so had it changed a few weeks after i got it 7/2018

95 was neglected horribly for years and lived in the rust belt from 95 till 05. sat idle for years as a condo car here in florida

99 and 00 was maintained insanley well before i got them. both garaged kept and original florida cars.

dlcoffin

stereorob- yeah, wow! I read your history about the Florida LS!

dlcoffin

so, you mean to say, my belt should last longer, being regularly exercised, versus one that just sits in place for too long. i agree with that. it's my daily, my only driver, so, there's that..

oldskewel

iTrader: (1)

Good reports above, but what you really need is reports (if you can find them) of T-belt failures. I'm always on the lookout for those, and they seem pretty rare.

Speaking also from experience with other cars, often a T-belt failure problem is actually caused by some other component - pulley, water pump, oil leaking onto belt, and failing T-belt tensioner. So in those cases, it's neither age nor mileage on the actual belt, but rather age/mileage/bad maintenance on the failing part. And for example, it could be that the T-belt is new, but a failing part was not changed during the T-belt service.

That last example is exactly what happened on my '91, although it was caught before any T-belt problem happened, and being non-interference, it would not have been a catastrophic failure.

This was back when my father in law (original owner) owned it and basically had the dealer do everything they said it needed, every time. He had the T-belt change at 96k / 8 years (had been due at 90k), and the dealer did not replace the water pump. 3 years later, at 122.7k miles, the water pump started leaking so he had the whole T-belt job done again while getting to the w-pump.

So now, I'm at 17 years and 80k mile on that T-belt, w-pump, etc. I'm waiting, hoping it never breaks. But if ever something were to fail (something in there making noise, having it skip a tooth and run badly, w-pump leak, etc.) I'd get in there and do the T-belt job while I'm in there fixing the other problem.

I think it's important, if paying someone else $1-1.5k+ to do this job, (for those with a 95+ with the interference engine) to realistically evaluate the replacement cost of the car vs. the probability of catastrophic failure (which seems to be pretty low). For example, roughly speaking, if you can buy the same car for $3k and the job costs $1.5k, well there should be a better than 50% chance of T-belt failure happening before something else kills the car to warrant paying up front to do that.

Pre-'95, I think the analysis is a slam dunk to not change it if it's running well.

If doing it yourself, it might be fun, so that's a completely different .