The old Corollas in the 70s and 80s had timing chains. In the 90s, Honda, Toyota, and even Nissan started making belt-driven cranks instead of chains. Now they are back to timing chains. What happened?
In: Engineering
A big problem with chain timing belts is that over time the pins starts to wear out causing the chain to stretch and the engine to get out of time. Timing belts use strong nylon fibers to prevent this from happening. Even as they wear out they do not stretch. Eventually they will end up jumping teeth but they will have better timing before this happens, and you can just make sure to replace the timing belt before this happens.
There are a few things which have happened to make timing chains popular again. Firstly engines have become more powerful so there are more forces required to open the valves. Timing belts are usually not strong enough to handle this increase in power. And secondly we have made huge advancements in metallurgy and metallurgical processes which means we can now make metals that wear much slower. So the timing chains we make today last several times longer then those we made in the 90s.
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