I have a 1.8S 2003 which has done 25000 and been mainly self serviced. I plan to tour Scotland in May .Do I need to change the cambelt before this trip? Mikeelsworth
Well… That totally depends who you ask.
The service book states it is done at 54000 miles, and does not quote an age, so a lot of people (some of which are experts) say it lasts until then (within reason).
However, a lot of people (again, a lot of who are experts) say it should be done at 6 years irrespective of mileage.
My story is this;
I bought my 2003 mx5 from a franchise Arnold Clark Mazda dealer with 11000 or so on the clock in September last year. I’d collected the car, however after doing so enquired about the advisory notice (for which the sheet was not supplied) stated on the MOT. Any MOT station can easily reprint the certificate/documents, so they should have been able to tell me. However, for whatever reason, they were unable to (even though it was the literally next door Arnold Clark Volvo that did the MOT only a few weeks earlier).
The salesman phoned me up, after I’d had the car for about a week saying the cambelt had been missed in the prep, and that he was going to get the service dept. to contact me to arrange to have it done.
Within a week or so, I had a new cambelt FOC.
Since then, I found out online that the advisory notice was simply ‘slight juddering of both off side brakes’, which were/are fine.
Draw your own conclusion as to whether they offered to do it to get me off their backs about the MOT advisory, or if they genuinely thought it needed done - my opinion is the latter.