Dayco Timing Belt Age...Is It an Issue?

I just received a pair of timing belts that are date coded from the 41st week of 2008 (08412XXX), i.e. early October 2008 and here we are on the 51st week of 2010, more than 2 years later. The belts appear to be pristine in undamaged, sealed Dayco Isoran boxes. Is this something I should concern myself about? Everyone seems to talk about making sure to get "fresh" belts.

Also, positions are 102-107 and 187-191. Obviously the first one is in the middle of the production spool, but is the second one close to the edge of the spool? What the highest set of numbers people have seen?

 

Not worth taking the chance IMO.
New ones are cheap compared to major engine work.

Karl

 

I guess this begs the questions of experts like Karl...what is a reasonable production date on a set up belts? 6 months? 10 months? How quickly from manufacture to distribution do they get?

 

For comparison, I bought belts in May of this year and they are dated from about September of '09. Roughly an 8-month turn around, if that would help if you negotiated for fresher belts from you supplier.

 

According to another recent thread here, Dayco themselves say they have a 5-Year shelf life, max.

That plus the 3-Year "Run-Time Life" (by Ferrari decree) gives a max life of 8 years pushing everything to the limit.


Take that for whatever it is worth.

 

These conversations always get me thinking, if only Ferrari had gone with chain driven camshafts.
Is it just the noise that's an issue with chains?

 

Sucderia Rampante Innovations (DaveHelms) is working on a solution for problems on those too (chain tensioners) IIRC.

No "free lunch" here.

 

Weight as well. When any of the maintenace questions come up I remind myself that I purchased a car from a racing company where the engine was expected to be pulled out after every race and gone through. So I consider a 3 year interval a gift. Of course I may push to 5 years for fun unless I get bored and have a good garage in 3.

 

I'm going to beg to differ with my esteemed colleague, Karl.

With an 8-18 month average (my experience) between manufacturer date and my purchase date (data taken from a decade long period) and both Pirelli and Dayco (who took over Isoran) stating a five-year shelf life, you're ok. This is based on Fiat and Ferrari-V-8 and "180 degree V-12" experience from 1980 on.

We never had these discussions in "the old days" (pre-348 single belt) and I don't remember any belt failures on new belt installations that weren't related to installation errors. This includes sample data from colleagues at the old FoW, European Service Center (Peter Lee and Patrick Pegues), Foreign Cars Italia (Greg Dixon and Tom Jones), Ferrari South, T. Rutland's and FAF...

 

Dear Peter, after reading your words I realized that I misinterpreted the original posters question. I "ass u me d" that having received belts meant that someone gave them to him as something they had sitting in their garage but not used. Therfore I thought buying them from a reputable source would be a better choice. Not that this changes the data you are referring to but I was mistaken by letting my mind go off in the wrong direction.

Karl

 

Thanks everyone for you opinions, which do vary somewhat. My overall take-away is that I should be OK. These were purchased from a reputable retailer who is well known to the F-chat community (T-Rutlands). I kept their name deliberately off my original post to get an unbiased opinion on pure age.