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| 3 Premature failure of the auxiliary drive belt Roger Parker highlights an item you need to keep an eye on. (Aug 07) All X12 and X13 cars, the saloon and tourer V8 engined MG ZT 260 and Rover 75 V8 cars tend to suffer from premature failure of the auxiliary drive belt. This is a very long belt that drives all external ancillaries, including PAS, Air Con etc. Under certain conditions the long run of the belt does allow excess slack to be momentarily created that the tensioner is unable to catch up with immediately and this can see the belt partially jump from a pulley. Ford in their wisdom created raised edges of some pulleys to help retain the belt, but if it does beat this then the | effect is to cut the belt lengthways. Usually some odd belt noise, a whine or a tick, tick tick, type of sound is the tell tale of the belt having jumped. If the belt remains intact then simply pushing a normal square 3/8" socket drive into the specific recess for this in the tensioner arm and loosening the belt to reseat it is enough. Otherwise replacement will be needed and for this reason a 260 owner is always best advised to have a spare belt in the car along with a 3/8" drive. Changing the belt is a doddle but take the precaution of drawing a route plan of the belts run between pulleys first.' Copyright
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