Car conundrum - advice sought

[warrendublin]

OK, here goes. I'm not sure what if any advice people here can bring but I'm trying to establish whether there is any solution to assisting me with an unfortunate situation which has recently occurred.

I bought a car new from an authorised dealership in 2008.

The car has been serviced in authorised dealerships since then. (I should add they are not the dealership from where I bought the car as the original dealership sadly closed down in recent years)

The car manufacturer recommend to the authorised dealerships that the timing belt be changed every 200,000KM

My car currently has 167,000km on it.

The timing belt has never been changed during a service at this point in my car.

The timing belt went in the car last week, rendering serious damage to the car engine.

As a result my car engine requires work in the amount of 2,500 approx- from a specialist garage as the dealership advised a price of around 5,000.00 to repair/replace the engine

In my opinion, if the timing belt had been replaced sooner, (ie that the threshold is too high set by the manufacturer) this problem would not have occurred, and I would not be at a loss of my car and several thousand euros in expense.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

 

[Guns N Roses]

The car manufacturer recommend to the authorised dealerships that the timing belt be changed every 200,000KM

It's been my experience that any decent dealer will recommend that you change the timing belt between 100,000 and 120,000 km's. I can't believe that any manufacturer would recommend changing it at 200,000 km's.

Unfortunately I don't see any realistic recourse for reimbursement of your loss.

 

[Jazz01]

Hi, just to add in relation to timing belt recommendations - it's 125K miles for Ford Mondeo...

But again, it's a "recommendation"...Personally, I don't think you have comeback on this.

You could try writing to them, giving the car history, giving details of the services over the years etc... but between the time you issue that letter and them replying back, it will be a number of weeks - in the meantime, you will need to resolve the issue...

 

[mathepac]

Check the maintenance hand-book that came with your car - it shows service intervals and service part change intervals based on both time for perishable items like cam-bets and distance e.g. 100kms or 5 years, whichever is soonest.

 

[epicaricacy]

I bought a 2003 Ford Focus second hand in 2008 from a dealership. I had a perfect service record with the dealership and had requested that the timing belt be changed at 80k miles in 2011. The service dept. assured me that the car would be OK for another 20K (Ford recommend 100K). I reluctantly agreed to wait.

The timing belt went a month later (81k miles) and the dealership tried the 'we only gave advice approach therefore could not be held responsible'.

I refused to accept their excuse and ultimately we came to an agreement whereby I paid for a new timing belt (parts and labour of 500 euros) and the dealership paid for the 2500 euros worth of damage done to the engine. I'm still driving the car and fingers crossed it's going well at 125K miles.

I would push the dealership to do a similar deal to the one I received.

 

[vandriver]

What car is it?

 

[Leo]

I would push the dealership to do a similar deal to the one I received.

That'll only work if the OP had asked for the timing belt to be changed and they stated it was not necessary. If the OP didn't request it to be done, there is no come back against the garage. Especially as the car has been services in multiple dealerships since it was bought and the recent garage won't have the full history.