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Cambelt Headache!


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I bought my 2000 lexus IS200 with 98,000 miles on the clock.

It's history showed a cambelt change at 90,000...happy days.

Recently a mate of mines alpha blew up after the cambelt snapped, despite it being changed 20,000 miles prior. It turns out that altough his cambelt was changed, the tensioners weren't... as a result, they seized and his engine met an untimely end.

This got me thinking, so I rang the garage that carried out the cambelt change on my lex. To my horror, they told me that only the cambelt was changed and not the tensioners.

The cars now on 110,000 miles and I'm scared to death in case the tensioners seize up. It's on my list to get done, but I've got to make a 300 mile trip this week without fail.

Is this a safe idea??? There's no noise or obvious signs that there are any probems in there.

Where's the best place to order the parts from, and which parts would you recommend get changed?

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i would always change the tensioners as well as the belt and would think lexus would do this as part of the course of doing the belt ,as for how long ,its a bit of a how long is a piece of string question as you can never tell .sure you will be ok. when you do the

tensioners you might as well do the belt again as well .

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i have spoken with a few lex dealers recently as im getting the cam belt changed ( being done today actually) and all of them listed the belt tensioner and idler pulley so you should have had all 3 changed at the same time.

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Any car that has a belt and tensioner should have both changed at the same time and most garages always do this. It's quite rare to find a garage that doesnt do it unless they where told not to by the person who's having the work done.

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all together with a big service plus a few extra bits and the cambelt etc it was the equiv of £750 but i took it to a garage across the border so I can claim back 20% of that as it was VAT.

no need to get the water pump replaced unless you are having problems with it...

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Thanks for all the replies.

After all that I decided not to use the car for the journey.

Lucky thing cos when the garage replaced the tensionr, they found two small cracks in the old one and a lot of play in the idler.

All in all parts cost £146 from Lexus Ellesmere Port and £60 labour.

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