I'm sure this has been covered many times before, but thats what you get for disabling search.

I just bought a '90 GXE with 135k. It has a new automagic tranny but the guy I bought it from didnt say anything about the timing belt. I'm going to call later and ask if and when he had it replaced. How often should it be changed? Is my car a timebomb waiting to go off, or am I worrying about nothing?

 

Hi,

read the faq

 

Unless sure about recent change, change it now for good sleep.
You don't wanna take risk of engine replacement, do ya?

 

Every 60K miles is the interval. But something to think about is that some people just change the tbelt, and it is the original tbelt tensioners that give out and cause engine failure-at least on some tbelt cars. I haven't heard of alot of tbelt breakage, and some cars are probably out there on the original parts-but since it can cause valve damage, I wouldn't risk it. If you get it changed, you should consider tbelt, tbelt tensioner, waterpump and possibly crank seal, or cam seals. All add to the price and may be overkill, but you don't want to essentially pay labor again if these other things go bad.

 

That's exactly the list of things I had changed at my dealer two weeks ago for my '93 gxe...cost me $700.

 

Well, I found out that the tbelt on there now has about 63k. Look's like I'm going to have a saturday of fun in the near future.

 

Do it while you still can, wait too long and you can start looking for a new engine/heads