Do VF commodore still suffer from timing chain issues ?

[Graemevfsv6]

Yes I know it's a different engine but if the chain is made properly it shouldn't matter

 

[Skylarking]

a timing belt or chain needs to replaced on every vehicle that has one roughly every 100,000 to 150,000 km...

Cam belts are specified within the service schedule where their replacement interval is between 90,000kms to 130,000kms or so, depending on manufacturer or parts supplier.

I’ve never seen any specified service interval for cam chain where a replacement interval is specified, as it’s a life of vehicle component.

In the past 400,000kms was considered to be a good run for the engine if maintained. These days, the real question becomes what time period a reasonable consumer would consider “life of vehicle“ to be?

I definitely wouldn’t consider the life of a vehicle to be 5 years (=100,000km @ 20k/year) to 7.5 years (150,00kms). Heck, I’d expect an engine to be serviceable (= doing scheduled items) for multiples of decades before needing rebuild (which brings me back to the 400,000kms lifespan at 20 years)

And if a manufacturer has wrongly determined an engines components reliability/mtbf estimations which I’d expect is where the service schedule comes from, and then tries to fix their fcukup by amending its service schedule post sale (so as to include cam chain replacement at say 150,000kms), I see such as a misrepresentation and bait and switch of sorts so I wouldn’t stand for such shenanigans I’d expect some ACL love shown by the seller/maker (which they call good will)

 

[stooge]

Cam belts are specified within the service schedule where their replacement interval is between 90,000kms to 130,000kms or so, depending on manufacturer or parts supplier.

I’ve never seen any specified service interval for cam chain where a replacement interval is specified, as it’s a life of vehicle component.

yes we basically went over it a year ago when this thread was posted, the belt needs a change not the chain unless you had one of those stretchy chains in the early ve's.
the op's original question was about the vf having the same issue and while someone did report a chain snapping prematurely time has proven the vf does not have the stretchy chain issue.

i would expect that most people within the accc/government that work with acl would say 10 years is a reasonable maximum "life of vehicle" term for the manufacturer have to cover.
one could argue they spent 50k on a new vehicle so it should last 20 years but if the accc was to enforce that you might find that manufacturers would just leave this country because having to support a vehicle at their cost for 20 years would not be profitable enough for them to remain here so there needs to be a reasonable cut off point.

 

[Skylarking]

...
i would expect that most people within the accc/government that work with acl would say 10 years is a reasonable maximum "life of vehicle" term for the manufacturer have to cover.

Thats just regulatory capture at work

... one could argue they spent 50k on a new vehicle so it should last 20 years but if the accc was to enforce that you might find that manufacturers would just leave this country because having to support a vehicle at their cost for 20 years would not be profitable enough for them to remain here so there needs to be a reasonable cut off point.

Such arguments defend the manufacturers poor design choice and the slide to the bottom of product quality at the expense of purchasers. Such should never be defended.

But, nothing stops the manufacturer from specifying life of vehicle components within the service schedule, things like cam chains, oil pumps, etc, (heck even fuel filters within the VF), other than they simply want to hide what how short their design life is (or how costly some service item is). They are deceptive shites.

With metallurgy and modern material science being as advanced as they are, manufacturers could build these complex devices to last a lot longer than they seem to. The can build then to be more easily services so they last longer. By spending marginally more in design and manufacture, they could achieve a longer life with little extra cost to the end product. But for planned obsolescence and profit, stuff the environment...

I will not defend planned obsolescence. Such is especially grating in this hypocritical world of “environmental concerns“ and banning of plastic bags unless the buyer pays and it’s all just bullshit talking while they continue to extract every dollar out of the pockets of purchasers.

If ACCC/governments really see it as you say, then they should make it clear by legislating manufacturers must state the products design life within the product sales brochures. Consumers may then wake up at the exorbitant prices they pay for stuff designed to fail and choose better, or be happy at where it’s at... If some manufacturers find it too hard to work within such rules, they are free to leave and others will take their place. Others will always take their place...

As is, this throw away society while trying to come to grips with environmental issues isn’t looking in the correct places... planned obsolesce must be stopped...

 

[Glenn merz]

a timing belt or chain needs to replaced on every vehicle that has one roughly every 100,000 to 150,000 km.
the early ve alloytec did have an issue of premature stretching which caused problems but I have not seen anything in the vf range because they addressed that issue somewhere in 2008/2009.

to your original question:
no I don't think you will have timing chain issues with the vf range apart from the normal maintenance.

I have a 2014 vf evoke 240000ks no issues at all with timing chain just keep your services up to date

 

[stooge]

If ACCC/governments really see it as you say, then they should make it clear by legislating manufacturers must state the products design life within the product sales brochures.

your perception of how the accc works is not how it actually works.
The vague wording is intentional and the government does not legislate that manufacturers "must" do that so the manufacturer wont.

 

[Skylarking]

your perception of how the accc works is not how it actually works.
The vague wording is intentional and the government does not legislate that manufacturers "must" do that so the manufacturer wont.

I know that civil legislation, most civil legislation, is often vague by intention since it’s written/strongly influenced by lobbyists to seem like it’s providing a benefit to joe public but structured so it’s hard for joe public to obtain that benefit provided. ACL isnt an exception.

That’s why I said “they should make it clear by legislating manufacturers must state the products design life...”, “they“ being the government who are the legislators after all, rather than the ACCC who are an independent commonwealth statutory authority who can’t write law. I‘d have thought such would have been clear given what I’ve written about such in the past...

But for governments to make any change requires a push from the public as the lobbyists won’t change that improves the life of consumers so won’t push for such. Sadly the public are busy playing with ipads and phones (or drinking at home beating the wife iif pandemic news reports can be believed).

And we can all be assured that if a companies products were so good, they‘d advertise the fact rather than simply use sports people or social influencers to tell us how “cool” the product is... Mostly stuff is made to the minimum required by law (which is an indictment on how competition doesn’t deliver) and stuff is sometimes made to a much less standard than required by the law (given the recalls for some seriously dangerous stuff they put out).

Me, I’m happy that ACL doesn’t specify an end point and is structured in vague terms around what an average consumer would expect give price paid. Such leaves much open to reasonable interpretations as it’s yet to be defined in any binding rulings what is “reasonable” or what is “life of product”. So there is always scope to argue a cam chain should last 20 years (given it’s not defined within the service schedule).

As for Holden’s VE chain drama, it would be interesting to see the cost of rectification that Holden handled as warranty, “good will” and/or ACL statutory warranty work. It would also be interesting to see what the manufacturing cost differences would have been between the VE substandard chains as compared to the robust designed chains and cogs over the life of the engines they built. I’d guess the cost penalty would be >100:1 by not building the engines correctly/robustly to start with.

 

[LyLy]

Read my post vf fail for timing chain

 

[Immortality]

If a car has a timing chain it should be good for around 400,000 + kms if the car is serviced properly.
My old vs commodore was still going strong at 315,000 kms and that hadnt been touched.

Both have timing chains but that is about where the similarities end.

The VS timing chain has about 30 links, the alloytec has hundreds of links. If your VS timing chain wears .1mm per link that is about 3mm of stretch over the entire chain. Take the same wear (.1mm) in a chain with 100 links and you now have 10mm of stretch. A long chain doesn't need a lot of wear to show a fair bit of stretch and this is why overhead cammed engines with timing chains tend to have more timing chain issues than old school V engines that have a single cam in the valley of the motor (aka the push rod engine).

 

[J_D 2.0]

Thats just regulatory capture at work
Such arguments defend the manufacturers poor design choice and the slide to the bottom of product quality at the expense of purchasers. Such should never be defended.

But, nothing stops the manufacturer from specifying life of vehicle components within the service schedule, things like cam chains, oil pumps, etc, (heck even fuel filters within the VF), other than they simply want to hide what how short their design life is (or how costly some service item is). They are deceptive shites.

With metallurgy and modern material science being as advanced as they are, manufacturers could build these complex devices to last a lot longer than they seem to. The can build then to be more easily services so they last longer. By spending marginally more in design and manufacture, they could achieve a longer life with little extra cost to the end product. But for planned obsolescence and profit, stuff the environment...

I will not defend planned obsolescence. Such is especially grating in this hypocritical world of “environmental concerns“ and banning of plastic bags unless the buyer pays and it’s all just bullshit talking while they continue to extract every dollar out of the pockets of purchasers.

If ACCC/governments really see it as you say, then they should make it clear by legislating manufacturers must state the products design life within the product sales brochures. Consumers may then wake up at the exorbitant prices they pay for stuff designed to fail and choose better, or be happy at where it’s at... If some manufacturers find it too hard to work within such rules, they are free to leave and others will take their place. Others will always take their place...

As is, this throw away society while trying to come to grips with environmental issues isn’t looking in the correct places... planned obsolesce must be stopped...

Here here. Couldn’t agree more! The problem with the environment and global warming is mostly consumerism and planned obsolescence. In the rush to give everyone “choice“ and keep them consuming we now throw everything out once it breaks because there are no spare parts available and everything breaks sooner because it’s “built” by a computer algorithm that provides the least amount of material (durability) possible and is made to last the warranty period and not a penny more. Not to mention the people who buy a new XYZ every couple of years just because they want the latest and greatest.

In yee olden days you might have a handful of manufacturers of any given item and they were built to last as long as possible and also had spare parts support because they didn’t have to stock parts for a million different options. The manufacturers earn’t money out of spare parts support not reselling a new widget to the same customer every two years!

It’s hard enough finding car parts these days that are kept on the shelf because Australia now has about one million different vehicles on sale! Before the turn of the millennium the majority of the car market was Commodore and Falcon so all spare parts were kept on the shelf. Now you can’t get diddly squat off the shelf because there are far too many options for suppliers to cater for.

The mere fact people are on this thread discussing “chain life” just shows how far planned obsolescence has intruded into everything. The life of a chain was never discussed in days of yore because they never ever broke! Why could a chain be designed in the 60s, 70s, 80s to last forever but the Alloytec chains had a known fault in the early days for stretching and snapping if left untreated. Because Holden/GM flew too close to the wind on planned obsolescence that’s why!

And every manufacturer of everything now flies as close to the wind on planned obsolescence as they dare! Unfortunately none of this will change as long as the majority of people want to keep buying new widgets all the time instead of keeping what they have for longer.