I am considering buying a  Mark  Three Fabia tsi with either the 90bhp engine or the 110bhp one. The problem is that  I think  both engines are belt driven. If that is the case I will not be interested and will be buying another make. Are all Mark Three Fabias belt driven or are the lower powered ones chain driven? Many thanks.

Why?, they are belt driven because previous versions were chain and there were issues.

 

What ever car you buy will have one or the other so you maybe best try finding a Manufacturers with Euro 6 engines tried and tested with no issues, 

any from later this year might be difficult to know what they will be like as petrols will have Gasoline Particulate Filters, the new unknown.

Edited 27 July, 20187 yr by Offski

As above, until we find out otherwise!

 

Edit:- until engine configurations change to make geared drive possible - and it probably will not, I'll be sticking with belts being okay.

 

My other car has a chain, but it looks like its system was designed to live longer than some of these, again until I find out otherwise.

Edited 27 July, 20187 yr by rum4mo

As it is the 1.2 TSI changed from Chain to Belt and are now discontinued, VW Group dropped that tech and moved on.

Vorsprung Durch Technik, if ever you get the tech right finally then drop it, and be sure if there were faults bring them with you...

Edited 28 July, 20187 yr by Offski

How often do the belts need changing my Skoda Dealer says 6 years or 60000 miles what ever comes first is this correct?  (My wifes 1.2 110 DSG)

Best have the 'Clerk on the desk of a UK Skoda Main Dealer' print out the Service Schedule Guidelines on your car, year of build and engine as sold and serviced in the UK, 

as VW Group have all sorts of 'Guidelines' for different World Regions / Countries, and that changes as failures become more regular or less so.

 

It is not a constant thing, what a new engine as such gets introduced as when Euro 6 emissions came in will only be getting known know how reliable parts and consumables are.

 

You can not know how good engines are after 5 years of care or abuse until 5 years has passed.

21 hours ago, hetty1 said:

I am considering buying a  Mark  Three Fabia tsi with either the 90bhp engine or the 110bhp one. The problem is that  I think  both engines are belt driven. If that is the case I will not be interested and will be buying another make. Are all Mark Three Fabias belt driven or are the lower powered ones chain driven? Many thanks.

 

As said, all Mk3 Fabias are cam belt driven. The previous Mk2 versions had some issues with cam chains. Cam chains in theory should be more reliable, but often that is not the case. Speaking with my techie hat on, chains can be a right pain, often stretching, sometimes having lubrication problems, sometimes having the oil pressure operated tensioner explode causing engines to implode etc etc. It's more common than you think. Whereas, cam belts are quieter, easier to change than a chain, and are cheap. They also don't suffer from problems like chains can. My new C3 Citroen has a long life belt that has to be changed every 12 years or 128,000 miles, whichever comes first. You will notice that cam belts don't break these days unless totally ignored for years and years and years! Stick with cambelts would be my advice. Most manufacturers use cambelts these days, not chains! There's a good reason for that. 

As suggested/stated by Offski, if I owned a car that came with a suggested cambelt service life of 12 years, I'd be keeping a close watch/listen on the latest service info.

 

I once owned a 1991 VX Cav GSI 2000 16 4X4, belt driven cams, started off life with I think 90K miles and no time interval, then when my car was 5 years old and had 35K miles run, I stumbled on a mention that VX had dropped the 90K miles and time limit to something like 35K miles or 6 years, I booked that car in immediately for a new belt, no messing about for me.

 

Edit:- I should talk to my VW service dept and see what they are saying currently, maybe the usual blurb, ie 4 years or XXK miles up to 200?, 5 years and YYK miles for all models after that point in time. Until I've asked I'll never know. Now, to get older daughter's brain in gear to get the belt changed again on her late 2009 Ibiza 1.4 16V 85PS petrol engine, first change was at 4 years 4 months, so I'd think that same again will work as she will not be planning to own that car in another 4 years and 4 months, mileage is lowish/average so not an issue for her usage.

Edited 28 July, 20187 yr by rum4mo

I should have mentioned, I'll likely be changing my cambelt in the C3 much sooner than 12 years or 128,000 miles. Although currently I have seen several examples of the 1.2 petrol 3 cylinder Puretech engine with over 100,000 miles on the clock (taxis) and these are still running on the original cambelts. The problem is that you cannot tell how worn a cambelt is by looking at it. If it actually looks like it needs changing then it is well overdue for a change. A cambelt can look in near new condition after 60,000 miles yet it can be well overdue for changing. The initial important wear takes place inside the belt as the different components start to delaminate and crack. Eventually this wear shows up on the outside of the belt. So prudence is always best, change it early! And by the way, Prudence is the service manager at our local dealers!

I know that when I got the cambelt replaced for the first time on my wife's 2002 Polo 1.4 16V 75PS, as I supplied all the parts to my VAG Indie specialist, he gave me all the old parts back including some others that he, from experience adds into the standard VW Group "cambelt kit" - and everything looked/felt as good as new - which was okay to me, better getting it all replaced than having to put up with the extra cost and inconvenience of car dead and off the road and wife needing me to hand over mine for a while.

 

Personally, I feel/felt that needing to get this work done every 4 years was a bit of an annoyance in inconvenience and extra costs, now that it moved to 5 years makes it slightly better, though 6 years sounds about right.  Maybe for mega mileage commercial users this is not a consideration but for low/average mileage private users it does get annoying - though better than a badly spec'd or designed chain driven camshaft.

Edited 29 July, 20187 yr by rum4mo

I agree, my Octavia has had 3 with cambelts needing replacing every 40000 miles...it's not what I signed up for when I bought the car. Originally it was 80k...then VW halved it. Its cost me around 1500 quid on top of the car.  I much prefer the chain cams.  I have 20yr old Nissans running chains with 200k on them..no issues.  VW could match that but they don't because they factor in unreliability to keep you coming back to dealers or replacing cars after a 3 years. VWs are just money pits. I also had a five year old Audi 1.8t again another shi#box with sludge in engine, new injectors, alarm, all rubbish going wrong.

I am not a petrol head so I don't know the ins and outs of every car on the market.

However every modern car I can think of has a cam belt, which should tell you something.

Even motorcycles are using belt or shaft drives, chain final drives on a m/cycle can be

visually inspected and easily adjusted unlike a cam chain.

I used to think like you Hetty then someone explained to me that the combination belts and turbos that we now get saves so much fuel that the cost of belt replacement is easily covered. I should add that a VAG man that I spoke to on the phone a while ago said that their "recommendation" of changing at five yrs was precisely that, i.e., not mandatory and if one does not thrash the engine or do a lot of miles then 6 or 7 yrs would probably be OK. Do you recall as I do that if you got 40 mpg out of a 1200 engine years ago, you were doing well, now I get more like 57 which is over 40% better.