i bought a 93 vtec..when i bought the car, there was a whine from the timing belt area. i figured the belt was a little too tight. i drove it for a couple months, and one day i drove it pretty hard and the whine seemed to be louder. so i pulled the valve cover off and there was little piles of timing belt material on top on the belt and spattered on the underside of the valve cover. the belt was trying to walk off the cam pulley, and rubbing on the covers. i towed the car to my shop and bought new timing/balance belts both tensioner pulleys and a new water pump. re-installed according to mitchell and alldata. every thing appears to be correct. it wasnt missing any components. i did not have the damn auto tensioner stop tool, so i had to zip tie the freakin thing in the relaxed position. i topped off the oil in the tensioner and reinstalled. all marks lined up. i did everything according to proceedure. and i still have the damn whine coming from timing area. engine runs insanely well. very good power, no hesitations or anything. both the original timing belt and balance shaft tensioners were bad, so i replaced. why is it whining? its like the belt is too tight. i havent pulled the valve cover back off yet, cause i work on cars all day and i hate to spend my free time fixing mine. do i have a bad tensioner or what???? did i miss a critical step some where? should i try the h23 tensioner swap?

 

Yea I would have done the tensioner swap while you where in there, but its too late now lol...

Just let the belt settle a bit, see if it keeps it up. When I did mine last month it whined for a while but it slowly went away...

Good luck.

 

That belt will relax a little but it still sounds like the tensioner is pulling it to tight...

I would do an H23 manual tensioner swap

 

thanks for the help..i'll let it go for a while. im still gonna pull the valve cover to make sure its not trying to walk off again. if it keeps up, i'll try the 'ol tensioner swap