On 27/02/2020 01:02, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 26/02/2020 18:25, Andrew wrote:
There was a time when snapped V-belts were a common sight on the
roadside, but now you never see them, and I never see the flat
multi-grooved ones either (*). Instead I see many half-moon
bits of broken coil springs on the side of the road.

Mostly people are not running cars to as low a state as they used to.

The modern trend is to pay to have a decent car on tick of some sort,
and dump it when it gets to 70k miles or so.

Modern belts will do 100K + and are inspected as part of maintenance.

There is little point in owning a car worth under £500 these days when
tax MOT and insurance will be more than that...unless you are driving
without any of the above.



I got £150 trade in for my 1998 Astra F 1.6 petrol estate with 75K
miles and full service history. Needed a cambelt when I sold it.
GOV.UK shows it has passed its MOT twice since then and doing about
10K per year.