Interference Engines

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FWIW, chains make more sense in general. Most people keep their cars for probably 200,000kms at most. By that time, you could be into belt replacement territory. I think most cars go to the wrecker (or people who don't care..) by 300,000km. That's the timing chain wear boundary. So for manufacturers, they keep more people happy with their initial purchase for longer. After that, they can blame maintenance, previous owner, whatever, and not worry about the timing belt issue.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
Why is it so hard to replace the belt? The only real problem I see with this is that it's not compatible with the Toronto approach to maintenance, which is usually "fix my car once it stops moving".
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Don't to have to have the engine at TDC to do belts?

I don't like belts, I'm lucky my Elantra has a Chain.
BMWs have chains, but I'm not gonna discuss other issues with their reliability.

Ducati still uses a belt in their SS. Most other SS have chains. Don't ask me why. And I don't think the maintenance on that engine is easy.

I'm glad I don't have belts in any of my vehicle
 
RockerGuy said:
Don't to have to have the engine at TDC to do belts?
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Not difficult to achieve. Socket on the crank pulley - spin the crank with a ratchet until the mark (either on the flywheel or on the front pulley) lines up.
 
Brian P said:
Not difficult to achieve. Socket on the crank pulley - spin the crank with a ratchet until the mark (either on the flywheel or on the front pulley) lines up.
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Wouldn't u get resistance due to compression of the engine?

Sent from my tablet using my paws
 
RockerGuy said:
Wouldn't u get resistance due to compression of the engine?

Sent from my tablet using my paws
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Yes and it gets a bit harder to turn during the compression stroke. You have bever checked valve clearances on a engine have you?
 
invictus43 said:
No idea...that's what I heard though..seems fairly low to me..
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Cmon man, a tire manufacturer cannot make a tire for $8. The material alone would be more than that.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_tire_cost_to_make


http://m.industryweek.com/none/natural-rubber-costs-pump-us-tire-prices


Since natural rubber constitutes as much as 40% of the cost of tire production, tire makers have had to boost prices to offset the higher cost of their key raw material. Goodyear Tire & Rubber was the first large manufacturer to institute a second round of price increases, raising consumer tire prices by 6% on October
 
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murf said:
Cmon man, a tire manufacturer cannot make a tire for $8. The material alone would be more than that.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_tire_cost_to_make


http://m.industryweek.com/none/natural-rubber-costs-pump-us-tire-prices


Since natural rubber constitutes as much as 40% of the cost of tire production, tire makers have had to boost prices to offset the higher cost of their key raw material. Goodyear Tire & Rubber was the first large manufacturer to institute a second round of price increases, raising consumer tire prices by 6% on October
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I worked for Ford during the Firestone recall ... tires were costing us a lot more than $8
 
sircastic said:
I worked for Ford during the Firestone recall ... tires were costing us a lot more than $8
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You're talking retail, even dealer cost or jobber price. I mean, what did Ford pay for the tires when they assembled the vehicle? They obviously pay less at that time. $8 seems obviously irrationally low. But they certainly pay less than dealer cost. $40? $50? I have no idea what kind of discount you get when you buy a million tires.. :-)
 
murf said:
Yes and it gets a bit harder to turn during the compression stroke. You have bever checked valve clearances on a engine have you?
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Yep. Heard you can screw up an engine if u don't assembled it right. If timing doesn't match.

I won't want to worry about that, what?? 40k?
 
invictus43 said:
You're talking retail, even dealer cost or jobber price. I mean, what did Ford pay for the tires when they assembled the vehicle? They obviously pay less at that time. $8 seems obviously irrationally low. But they certainly pay less than dealer cost. $40? $50? I have no idea what kind of discount you get when you buy a million tires.. :-)
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It's called OEM pricing. Many years ago I worked for an OEM and prices were insanely low compared to retail. I priced a Smiths tach for my car at about $75.00 retail but the purchasing agent overheard me talking about it and got an OEM price of about $15.00.

Price ten pounds of steel angle at Metal Supermarket and then price fifty tons at a mill. Pennies on the dollar.

I don't know if the same ratios exist now as my examples were before free trade and trade with China.

Each product will get its own QEM discount. While I'm sure GM gets 90% off on many items I don't think they get that on gas and oil.

Mark ups are part of the marketing of a product. Groceries tend to be high volume, fast turn over, low mark up items. Jewelry is slow volume, low turn over, high mark up.

Look at bottled water. Ten cents each on sale in a pack. Ten to twenty times that at an event. Free at a bottler if the labels go on crooked. (Retailers don't want crooked labels and the bottler can't re-use the bottles or water economically so they become a liability)

The high markups are justifiable if you understand the whole mass production chain but if you can beat the system once in a while...bonus.
 
invictus43 said:
You're talking retail, even dealer cost or jobber price. I mean, what did Ford pay for the tires when they assembled the vehicle? They obviously pay less at that time. $8 seems obviously irrationally low. But they certainly pay less than dealer cost. $40? $50? I have no idea what kind of discount you get when you buy a million tires.. :-)
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The cost of the tires for the recall were only charged out to the dealer for inventory control. The only money actually changing hands was Ford paying labour for the work.

I'll doubt you'll ever get an answer to your question because the people who actually know the numbers are pretty far up the food chain. The way the contracts will be written is with discounts based on volume, probably across model lines. As an example on high volume vehicles, say the Sunfre or Cavalier lines, GM is probably only paying $15-20 a tire but on Corvettes they might pay $80-120. At the end of the year, sales would be reviewed for annual incentives.

Tires are one thing in automotive that there really isn't a lot of margin on. Nobody pays retail pricing and a lot of shops will only make 10-15 points on the tires themselves and make it up on labour. I can't imagine that the manufacturers would be paying any less than 50% of wholesale, even that might be a stretch.
 
The engineers who are responsible for those parts know the costs, and they are not that high up the food chain.
 
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