D5 Cambelt and Auxillary Belt Failures - Am I Paranoid ?

[Seight_Returns]

I've read a dozen or so posts elsewhere about either timing belt or auxillary belt tensioner failure on D5 engined cars resulting in valve/piston collisions and consequent catastrophic top end engine damage. The affected cars I've read about have been in the 4yr to 8 yr and 60k to 80k miles range. The failure mode seems to be one of either:

- timing belt tensioner fails causing the timing belt to slip or
- auxillary belt tensioner fails, aux belt slips off, tangles with timing belt at flywheel pully and pulls timing belt off

I have a 56 plate V70 D5 which has just gone over 60k and is coming up to its 5th birthday - I quite like it and intend to keep it for the forseeable future. I think the scheduled timing belt change is 8yrs/108k. I've spoken to a dealer whose told me that there was a recall for timing belt tensioners but it only affects recent cars. Despite this, I'm tempted to have both belts and tensioners changed when it's serviced next month anyway.

Has anyone else heard of any real world examples of these types of failures ? Is this a real issue or am I just reading about statistically insignificant outliers and getting paranoid ?

Edited by Seight_Returns on Thursday 18th August 16:57