It is not possible to estimate the remaining service life of a belt by looking at it.

For example, my brother bought a newish Audi TT last spring. It had 35,-40,000 miles on it. He loves driving the car. He and his wife plan to take a road trip to Maine and have the dealer check the car over to make sure it is ready to go. Harry specifically asks about the timing belt. The dealer says 'with that few miles, the timing belt is fine.' They have a nice trip, get back to Wisconsin (about 5 hours from home) and the tensioner fails. It was a major hassle, and an expensive tow, in addition to doing $5000 worth of damage to the engine.

I bought an '87 245 last week. It looks like it has been serviced by a Volvo dealer for most of it's life. Odometer (busted) says 227,000 miles. I'm going to replace the timing belt and tensioner because I don't know the condition of either and don't care to be stuck along side the road. Reason tells me that this is the correct course of action.

If it is your own car and you don't mind being broke down by the side of the freeway at night, do what you will. If it is a car that your wife or one of your kids is counting on, IMHO (and not meaning to be rude) it is irresponsible not to change the timing belt and tensioner on an unknown engine.



Greg