Yes some american cars have combined belts and interference, but the vast majority do not. Its a rarity to find an american car (other than generally cheaper entry level stuff from the 80s and early 90s) that are US left on the roads with interference design and timing belts.
Most that have belts and US brands are non interference.
Planning owners to have to engage in a $400-$700 replacement cost at 60k just because you decided to be cheap on your engine design is piss poor engineering. And to top it off, since you are opening the whole thing up anyway, replacement of the water pump, whether needed or not is usually recommended to save you the cost on labor if it does go out between next belt change, makes for a rather costly $500-$1000 repair for no reason other than CHEAP production decisions.
Nissan is not the only one moving away from belts, if you use an inteference engine you sure as hell should have a chain... if you have a belt, better make sure the design is non-interference.
I don’t argue you have NEVER seen or heard of a belt fail personally, but I can assure there are owners out there that can testify that their timing belts have not lasted to their recommended change mileage.
Timing belt and inteference engine design are trademarks of simply cheap engine design. Manufacturers trying to eek out more horsepower out of smaller engine without investing in proper parts to do so.
“Timing belt and inteference engine design are trademarks of simply cheap engine design. Manufacturers trying to eek out more horsepower out of smaller engine without investing in proper parts to do so.”
I don’t know that I’d agree with that. Designing an engine involved a series of trade-offs, and there may be good reasons why an engine was designed with a timing belt and an interference design.
I will say that I am not a fan of such designs. My old Volvo had a belt, but was non-interference. My current (4-cyl) Honda Accord has a chain. The current Honda V6 has belts, and I don’t know if it’s interference or not.
My old Volvo used to eat belts regularly, well before the suggested replacement interval, because there was a minor oil leak into the area behind the timing belt cover. Fortunately this “only” resulted in a completely dead car on the side of the road.
Anyway, it is something you should know about a car before buying it - and plan on replacing the belt (and maybe water pump, too) at the suggested intervals. It doesn’t have to be such an expensive job if the engine and car are well designed for maintenance - replacing the one on my Volvo only cost a couple hundred dollars, but was easy to get at.
I’d like some proof of your assertion. None of the three dealers I called have ever heard of it happening on the VG30-series engine.
On the VG30, it’s not cheap engine design but a desire for a quieter, more refined sounding engine, which was something the Japanese had to do to get market share in the US. Horsepower has nothing to do with it. Higher horsepower engines these days use chains, especially blower cars.
Back when Nissan was designing the VG30, you couldn’t get a reliable quiet chain drive, so they went with belts. There are new “silent” chain drives that are much improved, so Nissan can use those with no penalty.