timing belts and engine wear

[bradhays]

I bought a 2011 Crown Vic with 300k miles 12 mos ago and I'm wondering how to approach servicing the timing belt. I know very little of it's past maintenance records other than what I've done with it this past year. Basically I'm wondering if I should go ahead and attempt to replace it now, or wait til something starts to go wrong. I don't know how timing belts typically go bad...if they just break or start to stretch or what. If this is an interference engine I'm imagining a fairly bad event so I'd like to get educated and be pro active about it.

Second...Scotty Kilmer teaches that the worst wear an engine sees after changing the oil is before the oil gets pumped back into the filter and then into the engine components during the first engine restart. But he says if you disable the ignition spark somehow when cranking for the first time again, the lack of combustion in the cylinders helps with reducing this kind of wear quite a bit. I don't have an owner's manual and I'm not sure what fuse to pull to disable combustion ignition, or if removing a fuse would be the best way to do this. Any opinions on how this should be done?

 

[jyarosz]

Don,t know about the timing belt,but after oil and filter changes I floor the gas pedal and crank the engine for 15 or 20 seconds.If you floor the gas pedal on modern cars and crank the motor it will not start.. try it on your car before you change the oil.

 

[tixer]

Your engine will have a timing chain rather than a belt. Although the chains will stretch a bit over time, they tend to have a pretty long lifespan. You just don't hear about failures. It'll get pretty noisy before it fails, and even then, it will usually be the timing chain tensioners, rather than the chain itself. When you have to go in there to replace the tensioners, you'll get a good look at the chain anyway.

Personally, I've never had trouble with 'em. I had a '99 Town Car which would have had basically the same engine as your '11, and it was still running well when I sold it at ~270k? The transmission was getting pretty shaky, and the harmonic balancer was trying to self-destruct, but the engine sounded great.

 

[driller]

If any of my cars have been sitting for weeks, I will pull the relay for the fuel pump before cranking. You can tell when cranking that you have cranked enough because it will sound less noisy and seems to turn over easier. Then I replace the relay and prime the fuel by cycling the key on and off three times or so before cranking. It pretty much fires right up with no chain/tensioner noise.

If you hold the accelerator to the floor when cranking, you disable the fuel injectors thus depriving the engine of fuel. This is a common EFI strategy to be able to help clear a flooded situation. For some reason this trick doesn't always work on my '96.