I am currently looking into the posibility of converting the timing side of the engine to all gear drive. This would totally elliminate the belt and last the life of the engine.
Would any other owners be interested in this conversion if it proves possible and viable?
A company called Zeus used to do timing belt replacement gear kits for 200 and 300 TDi Land Rover engines around 15 years ago and I invested in one following 2 previous premature belt failures - and it was an inteference engine - despite changing belts at half the LR recommended interval. They were noisy but did the trick for nearly 100,000 miles, until they shattered and trashed the top-end of the engine for the 3rd time!
Great idea, but maybe still quite hard (and expensive) to make resilient enough I suspect.
