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Timing belt looks loose... VIDEO

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endeffect0

15+ Year Contributor
544
2
Sep 19, 2006
Lancaster Area, Pennsylvania
Ok guys got my talon on the road and now I'm running into all the little problems that make DSM's a joy...

My timing belt sometimes looks lose when I park it. Seems to depend on where the rotation the engine stopped, which makes sense given the tension put on it by the cams. the thing that really worries me is that i can see the belt 'bounce' when the car is idleing, even more when its just warming up. I don't have any experience with timing belts and my last car didn't even have a head so I figured I would show some real dsm guys whats up and see what the mass opinion is..

To give everyone a little background I am about 500 miles into a rebuilt six bolt swap with no special work to the head or any upgrades that seem relevant to this problem. (if it is a problem and I'm not just over nervous about my new car) Did all the work myself including the timing belt, which is also brand new by the way. the timing belt tensioner is not new but it seemed to have plenty of pressure when i compressed it.

Heres the link to the video.
YouTube - talon belt
 
what about the tensioner pulley? your tensioner and your pulley should of been replaced even if it looked good just to be sure. Also if the tensioner had even just a little bit of oil on the top it could affect the tension on the T-belt.
 
my motor was just built and it does that and they replaced thetensioner. I had bought one from mitsu and they said it was locked up and couldn't get it to close back. How did you get your coil pack of ver there? I have a cyclone intake manifold and i need somewhere for mine to sit becuase i don't have the brackt for the cyclone coil pack.
 
thanks for the input on the timing belt. it was creeping me out but I've never had to deal with a loose one before so i didn't know.

As for the coil packs. I have a 1st gen head and had no place to mount the 2g coil packs so i made a little L bracket then bent the stock coil pack mount so that it would fit in two bolt holes. I didn't even need to drill new holes... The plug wires are from a make your own V8 plug wires kit that i picked up at pep boys for 35$ you need the V8 one becasue you get more long wires than the 4cyl kit and its only a few bucks more anyway. Its a really sweet little mod that worked really well.. I'm pretty happy with it. if you want ill get some pictures of it close up so that you can see it better when i take it off to fix this belt.
 
DSM thunder: i did not replace the tensioner pulley.. in fact i didn't pay much attention to it at all. and i wouldn't be shocked at all if some oil got in their. i did kinda make a mess of things at one point. How would this affect the tension of the belt though. thanks everyone for the input so far.

And just to easy everyones mind, don't worry I'm not gonna be driving this till I figure it out... I'll be walking to campus and work today. again... damn DSMs
 
no it wont reach unfortunately but it is only 3 wires. so what i did was cut the harness about two inches back from clip then extended the wires to where i wanted them to go. its nice because i still get to use the stock clip to unplug it from the coil pack when i need too.
should i just do a write up on this?
 
Had a similar sound with my recent timing belt job...turned out to be a bad idler pulley with too much play. As time went on a grove got worn into the t-belt from all the wobbling around.
 
ok guys. heres the serious stuff...

the timing belt has slipped a few teeth .. i put the bottom end at TDC and the top was no longer lined up. the video I made was the last time it was running. and i don't hear any distinct metal on metal sounds from it then so MAYBE i dodged the bullet.

i tore down the side of the bock and the belt is in good condition. the tensioner pulley and tensioner arm are fairly new and are in good condition with no sign of wear.

so i took the tensioner off to see if that was shot. it had oil on the bottom half of it. I don't know why. it is possible some oil got on it when i spilled a bit about 500 miles ago... but i dono.

I compressed the tensioner with a C clamp and had plenty of pressure to it... now i don't know how much it should have but it more than held me up when i tried to press it in with my body weight... new ones from the parts store are 99.98 so I'm not keen to get one without cause.

so now i need some advice/ input. I have an autoX this weekend that i would really like to get to but i need to figure this out. where do i go from here.
 
Ok so i tore it down and redid the timing belt. I used a new pulley tensioner. i actually had a spare that i forgot about.
put it back together and bolted everything back on then did a compression test.

I did 6 cranks on each cylinder with the plugs out of the others. here are the averages from each cylinder
#1 153psi
#2 149psi
#3 150psi
#4 151psi

I have yet to look up the normal range for the six bolt yet, but at least its consistent. the car ran great and had a nice smooth idle so I'm pretty happy.
I also found a coolant leak on the back near the throttle body but I'm not gonna worry about that till the morning.
 
its the tensior, and by the noise too, we have a mitsubishi suv in the shop that has a timing belt and has that same problem, if it gets any loose, your water pump will stop working and you will start overheating, get a new timing belt kit
 
i just remembered that i should have been doing that test on a warm motor. oh well. If the numbers seem unusually low to any one for a cold motor I will redo it in the morning.
 
costas14: you are correct the timing belt was too loose. and it was the tensioner that was bad. however the water pump is not driven by the timing belt in these cars. and my biggest concern would be skipping a few teeth and smacking a valve on the piston as apposed to over heating.
 
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