The timing belt of choice for most people seems to some type of kevlar belt, but today I was out with my mom trying to help her pick out a new car and the salesman kept going on about the Saturn Vue having a steel timing belt. He was saying how they never break so you never have to change them. I've never heard of steel belt before so i looked them up on google. Is there really any truth to what he said, and are they practical for our cars if they make them for us?

It is probably a type of chain.

Its a timing chain. They are used by push rod engines mainly, but the SR20 and the VQ35 use them as well, I know there are more applications but these are some examples.


Oliver
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Its actually called a timing chain. I know most v-8's use these. Its mostly due to the cam not being in the head but being in the block. Where having a cam in the head means that it will most likely have a timing belt.

Second that. Its a car salesmen. I went to a gm dealership and i wanted to look at a new cobalt turbo to see what kinda turbo was on it an the salesmen was asking me what it was

He probally just ment a timing chain like stated.
I don't see how they would make a steel timing belt.

And even though its a steal chain dont mean it wont break, they do.

4b11 in an evo X has a timing chain.

I can assure you that if it had the 3.6L it won't have a timing chain, but the 3.5L might have, not really looked too much into the car.

So are there any advantages to these over normal timing belts?

Yes metal is alot stronger than rubber.

I had a timing chain in my altima. That bi*** went well over 200K with no problems. Timing chains are designed to outlast the engine.

Timing chains are very common, it's been around for a really long time, especially in the ford/chevy v8 engines.

I have seen many sentras around here go over 200k with the timing chain. Gotta love reliability. Nissan only recommends changing them if changing cams for whatever reason. 183K and going strong on my sentra.
My sentra actually has two chains, One off the crank to drive an idler. The idler drives the 2 cams.

Meanwhile, the timing chains on the old U20 motor (2000 roadster) were good for 30K miles. That's thirty, not three-hundred.
Ford claims their kevlar belts are "permanent". I guess something else always breaks first, or the cams go flat.

Car salesmen are directly responsible for all the false information on the internaweb. Before those turds got connected, it was all truth.

A quick tech explanation of why we can't have a chain please, at least a balance shaft chain so I don't have to do the BSE this weekend.

Afroclipse said:

A quick tech explanation of why we can't have a chain please, at least a balance shaft chain so I don't have to do the BSE this weekend.

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Because a chain is internal and must be lubricated by oil. Design and build a sealed front cover, some sort of oiling system, gears, chain, and some sort of tensioning system for the 4g63 and it should work.

92awddsm said:

Because a chain is internal and must be lubricated by oil. Design and build a sealed front cover, some sort of oiling system, gears, chain, and some sort of tensioning system for the 4g63 and it should work.

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Ooooh new winter project while I'm bored.

20r and 22r toyota motors also have the chains. i have seen chains fail as cars come through my junk yard on a regular basis, not as much as a timing belt though.
what the 4g63 needs is a cam gear driven supercharger, along with a nice 35r.

Why we have belts instead of chains is that belts are tons more flexible than chains and can absorb "cam shock" a lot more than chains any day of the week.

As we know, that the cam really doesn't roll around in a continual motion, but actually rolls in a slight jerking motion since it's pushing down on the lifters at a given moment-along with the lifters actually "pushing" on the lobes when coming up. Plus, with the crank having this slight jerking motion due to power strokes are added to this condition.

This is basically "cam shock" (the same as what the crank does when rotating and why there HAS to be that harmonic balancer on front of the crank - to flatten out the jerking that the crank does on the power strokes of each cylinder), and even though chains have that large guide tensioner in them, the chain is simply not flexible as the belt along with the tensioner that is always on either a spring or as hydralic as our motors are.

What happens is the chain is actually being "snapped" like a rubber band during the sprocket roll and the tensioner supposed to flatten out that "snapping' action. But, the chain can handle so much snap and suddenly, thing will break unexpectedly.

Neighbors of our had a 2003 Saturn LS200 (while we had a 2001 LS-200) with that dreaded 2.2L in it and the chain snapped at 45k miles without any warning. They just got the car paid off, but unfort was out of warranty. They had to fork out over $3500 for the motor rebuild. And we got rid of our LS-200 shortly afterwards since problems on these things started to mount horribly..and we had 64k miles on it.

What I'm now concerned is with that Cobalt SS with the turbo. Granted, 265 hp is pretty good stuff coming out of the new 2.0L - which is the smaller version of the 2.2L, but using the same style of chain, but they'd better have an awful good warranty on that motor since it used that same, single row "bicycle" chain...and it's smaller than a #420 motorcycle chain.

(and have you seen the size of cam sprockets that the 4B11 motor uses? almost 1/3 size of our 4G63 motors. Thus, the chain- a single row, but multilink style-is smaller a well. And multilink type chains are better than the simple bicycle chain...)

I think that the 20R motor was a lot better motor for Toyota than the 22R since the 20R (as with its predecessor, the 18R) used a dbl row bicycle chain whereas the 22R went to a single row bicycle chain.

-DSM

Myself and my family members have had numerous Nissans and Infinitis with the SR20DE, and we've never had any timing chain issues.

My DD is a 1980 Datsun 510 wagon with a timing chain. Original build, original chain, 176K and counting.

Boost92awd said:

Yes metal is alot stronger than rubber.

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2nd that

The metal "belt" is probably really a chain, and it can break, but more than likely it will stretch long before it breaks.

Chains
Nissan VH45DE V8
Honda K-series
Nissan KA series
Nissan SR series
Mitsubishi 4b series
Ford 4.6 & 5.4 dohc & sohc.

Defiant said:

Meanwhile, the timing chains on the old U20 motor (2000 roadster) were good for 30K miles. That's thirty, not three-hundred.
Ford claims their kevlar belts are "permanent". I guess something else always breaks first, or the cams go flat.

Car salesmen are directly responsible for all the false information on the internaweb. Before those turds got connected, it was all truth.

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Change the timing chain on a U20?

That's what a l20 swap is for.