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Thread: Belt fail in 90 days? What the hell!

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Jackson NJ
    Posts
    904
    My Cars
    1997 328i c M trim

    Belt fail in 90 days? What the hell!

    Swapped the motor in July.
    September a little squeaking - replace one idler , still squeaking changed the second idler, ok 2 weeks and squeak again , changed water pump and squealing even worse . Holy crap! What the hell !!!

    Can it be the belt ? Swapped another one in yesterday and it is as quiet like a church mouse. Man am I pissed ! Cheap shit !

    Moral of the story dont buy these cheap belts from Advanced Auto. Conti only for me from now on. Or was this just bad luck. What makes a belt fail so soon ?

    So I figured what the hell I put on a new fan clutch when I did the water pump.

    I was surprised how easy the water pump change was less than 2 hours. Thank you Doug's Domain some really good DIY there . And the jelieve for the hints on bleeding the air from the cooling system!

    Time to fix my full auto top its grinding again dammit.

    Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
    This car is AWESOME !!!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2015
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    1,736
    My Cars
    1998 BMW 328i
    If you look at a cheap belt side by side with a quality belt, the answer becomes obvious. I rarely trust neighborhood parts houses enough to put their stuff on my bmw. I just order my stuff from fcpeuro. The oem parts are usually cheaper online than inferior parts you'd see in a store. And they are much more quality.

    Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2016
    Location
    Tenerife, Spain
    Posts
    628
    My Cars
    1997 BMW E36 323i
    W.r.t. your question "What makes a belt fail so soon", here is an interesting experience (was looking for E39 530i experiences few days ago; thinking of getting one as 2nd car some day):


    I don't remember exactly where in the video they say it, but the owner of this E39 530i was able to buy the car dirt cheap, because the engine kept "eating" belts and the previous owner thought it was something serious. One after the other belt would break. Eventually, after buying it, he discovered the oil filter housing gasket was bad and continuously sprayed oil small amounts of oil on the belt, causing it to deteriorate very fast.

    In your case it's probably just the bad quality belt, but if the problem returns, this is something to check perhaps..

    Update: Start at 9:00 to hear the conversation about the belts continuously being destroyed...
    Last edited by ed323i; 10-14-2018 at 11:57 AM.


    1997 E36 BMW 323i
    (European) 275k km (171k miles), with following small mods:

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