cam belt broken to early?

Hi,
My cam belt broke and caused £1500 worth of damage 2 months after I bought
the car privately. The car had done 90000 but the recommended change is at
144000. The car has been serviced by a Peugeot dealer since new (Until I
purchased it) and it ran out of warranty in November last year. Should I
contact Peugeot about this or will they not cover this damage? The garage
that has repaired the car believe that the belt breaking caused all the
damage, not something else damaging the belt first.

2004 307SW 1.6HDi

Lenny

 

Hello,

Just my personal opinion, but I have always changed the cambelt, idler and
tensioner avery 20000 miles, maybe execessive, but with each engine and
manufacturer specifying anything between 36000 and 80000 etc, i like to play
safe.

 

Also, the cambelt should really have been in the list of things to do when
you first bought the car.

 

It would probably be worthwhile tackling Peugeot. There was an early
problem with my 505 which required replacing the wet sleeves and
pistons. Apparently it was a fault in the seals. It was outside the
warranty period but they finally met most of the costs. If there is
good reason to think that the fault was caused by an error in design/
manufacture then in most countries the manufacturer is liable for ever
(though the cost of litigation usually makes this not much more than a
technicality). Most countries have government agencies which try to
enforce the legal principle (which is that all goods sold must be of
merchantable quality - which means that they are reasonably suitable
for the purpose for which they are sold). And manufacturers are
increasingly aware of the opportunity offered by channels such as this
newsgroup (or the other one ending in 'sucks') and the press to
publicise bad experiences. The 'warranty period' does not limit the
seller's obligations under the law.
On the other hand, the fact that the failure occurred at 90k, rather
than, say, at 2k, raises a distinct possibility that the failure was
due to something other than bad design/manufacture. But maybe still
worth a try.