Hi all

Someone contacted me regarding their recent purchase, a '93 850 GLT with 99,000 mi when purchased.

Under the hood, there's a sticker which says, "Byte Exchange", and someone wrote "98,000 mi" on it.

Does anyone have any idea what this means??? I made some guesses about ECU failure & exchange, EEPROMS and so on, but -hey- that's only a guess and not very useful to him.

Being uncertain of the history of his new car, his biggest worry is that the timing belt may not have been changed - I think that on 92-93 models it has to be done at 50000 mi according to a recent post by Uncle Olaf (mirrored here

http://au.geocities.com/ozbrick850/timingbelts.html

on my site)

and this mysterious sticker may or may not have something to do with the second scheduled timing belt change. Any thoughts on the strategy he should adopt would be appreciated, he has now got 104k mi on the clock.

That's the replacement T-belt sticker and (typically) the tech is suppose to write the mileage and date when he replaced the timing belt. I've also seen where some people write the mileage when it's due but that's not what's suppose to be done. If it says 98K miles with a recent date, I'd assume that it was just done. The maintenance book (if present?) should also have a dealer stamp for its 100K service (which includes a T-belt on a '93 850 ONLY) if it was done at a dealer.

If you're still not sure, remove the one bolt that holds the upper t-belt cover in place and look at the T-belt. If it's new, it should be obvious as you're see nice fresh lettering, no cracks, etc vs the opposite.

Thanks John, perfect info.