Endurance Warranty, Omega Auto Care, Toco Warranty and American Dream Auto Protect We all need something to keep us running. For some people, that’s a cup of coffee in the morning. And for your car?

The timing belt is a notched rubber belt, sometimes called a Gilmer belt. This belt allows the crankshaft to drive the camshaft, which in turn opens and closes the valves. Without this belt, the ...

Our 2001 Subaru Forester (93,000 miles, we're the only owner) has been an excellent, essentially maintenance-free vehicle. Recently, when a front axle was replaced for a torn CV joint boot, the garage ...

I recently had the timing belt replaced in my son's car (a '97 VW Passat) by a local mechanic in southwest Michigan. The next day, my son left to drive back to New York City, where he is a student. An ...

Q: I recently had to have a new water pump put in my 2005 VW Bug. At the same time, they replaced the timing belt. Twenty-three days later, I was stranded because the timing belt broke. After they ...

Dear Tom and Ray: I recently had to have a new water pump put in my 2005 VW Bug. At the same time, they replaced the timing belt. Twenty-three days later, I was stranded because the timing belt broke.

It really doesn’t matter how fast you’re driving when a timing chain or timing belt breaks. If the engine is an interference design, then this failure has possibly turned the rest of the engine to ...

I had a 1991 Civic. At 105,000 miles, the timing belt broke while we were driving. I pulled off to the side of the road — the cold, dark, middle-of-nowhere, Indiana road — and just to make sure to do ...

DEAR CAR TALK: I bought a 2009 Hyundai Accent new back in the day. Today it has 77,000 miles on it. I knew it was time to change the timing belt, but that's not cheap, so I put it off thinking I could ...

Q: You recently wrote about a guy whose timing belt broke, and who tried to restart his car but whose valves survived only through sheer good luck. In 1957, I had a new Ford six-cylinder, standard ...

We must first understand what each of these two systems does for a car. They both serve the same purpose, which is to coordinate the movement of the crankshaft as well as the camshaft(s) so that the ...