Hey y'all...finally found a place to chat about my 2003 Outlander. Great vehicle!

Okay, here's the question: We had to take it in this AM for a water pump. We had an extended warranty, so no big deal.

Now we took it to a dealer (was this mistake #1?), and here's what they said. It also needs a timing belt, a drive belt, and a balancer belt.

Excuse me? Since when does any car need a timing belt at 51,000 miles? Does this sound odd?

And the drive belt I can see, okay. But what the heck is a balancer belt?

Can anyone lead me in the right direction on these questions? Is the dealer trying to pull a fast one?

Larry

 

You'll need to remove the timing belt in order to replace the water pump- with that being the case, you might as well install a new Tbelt while you're at it. There are 2 Timing belts back there. You should replace BOTH when doing a Tbelt service. If the extended warranty is paying for the water pump, the only additional labor you should be paying for is for the second timing belt (remember, the main timing belt needs to be removed to change the water pump therefore no additional labor should be charged for it. The rest of the charges should be in parts only (Both timing belts, etc). Good Luck!

Joel, CA

 

Thank you!

I'll give the dealer the benefit of the doubt, but the price we were quoted after we let him know all that was involved in replacing the belts was $200 less. I'll just assume he was giving us a price to consider for later if we didn't have it done now

Thanks again!

 

Exactly Joel! WOO!