Hi Scotty, I’ve been looking at Acura, Honda and Toyota SUVs and Pickups. Less than $20k. This appears to put me at around the 100k mile mark. Unfortunately after looking at hundreds of listings and Carfaxes I’ve never seen a service record indicating a timing belt change. Only a handful of of sales people were aware or helpful with regards to this issue. Do people dump these cars before shelling out the $1500 for this service?
I have a great PT Cruiser Turbo and a couple years ago decided to have the timing belt replaced at 87,000 miles. (Chrysler recommends replacement at 100,000 miles). Recently I checked CarFax.... and the timing belt replacement was not noted! I sent a copy of the repair invoice to CarFax. They said: "Oh, you had the repair done at a shop that is NOT affiliated with CarFax". Huh? What good is CarFax if they dont note all the confirmed repairs? If you have the work done by a good independent mechanic, like Scotty, but he is not 'affiliated' wtih CarFax, the work will not be noted. Makes CarFax worthless!
Probably correct. The timing belt like is about 120K miles.
Those are well made cars and most people do not bother changing it since in most cases, it does not give them any issues.
