I just swapped in a type r motor and I did the timing belt myself. I replaced the timing belt, water pump, tensioner pulley, and spring. I just got the motor started up and it was running fine for a while with a little bit of a low idle but no noises. After warming it up for like 5 to 10 min, at idle, the timing belt started making a sort of sound that sounded like it was rubbing on plastic. It also vibrates on the side between the intake cam and the water pump. Any ideas?

 

Did you go through the proper belt tensioning procedure? Also did you install both guide washers on each side of the timing belt sprocket down on the crankshaft?

 

I have a manual tensioner and when i just tightened the tensioner down to torque it wasn't tight enough so I made it tighter with a screwdriver. Also, when I took off the timing belt, there was one guide washer that came off from in front of it, I don't remember seeing the other one but it was a little while ago. and I put that one back on with the concave face facing outwards away from the belt.

 

Ah yes I see that they changed the timing belt sprocket on later model Integras, including Type R's, so that only 1 guide washer is needed, which goes on after the timing belt, on the outside of the sprocket.

But what do you mean by manual tensioner? You have to go through the process of turning the engine over 5-6 times, loosening the tensioner bolt, turning the engine by 3 teeth on the cam gear, and then tightening the bolt. If you don't, you could have problems like you describe (belt vibrating) or the belt could possibly jump a few teeth on the cam gears.

 

sorry, i meant that I have the auto tensioner. And when I was tightening down the tensioner, I torqued it down, cranked the motor 3 teeth, loosened it and torqued it down again. It didn't seem tight enough, so I went back and wedged a screw driver between the tensioner and the spring and tightened it by hand while torquing it down.

 

When you turn it 3 teeth, the tensioner bolt has to be completely loose so that the belt can pull the tensioner pulley to where it needs to be.

 

yeah, thats what i did, sorry i was confused

 

Also, I made my crankshaft pulley set at tdc and the marks on the camshaft pulleys were not perfectly lined up. But they weren't that far off.





When i set the marks on the camshaft pulleys directly next to each other, the white mark on the crankshaft pulley is less then a cm away from the mark on the plastic cover.

 

how can you tell when the timing belt is tight enough? I just tore it down and loosened the tensioner pulley, but is there a specific way to tell there's perfect amount of play in the belt?

 

going by the pics and what you said you did.... your t-belt is loose.

 

how can you tell by the pics that my t-belt is loose?

 

by the way the cams are off... from that angle it looks to be less than a tooth off. so if you take that much slack up in the t-belt i am willing to bet that the gears line up. another cause of the rubbing would be the back cover up by the cam gears. take a look at that as well.

 

actually in those pics, the belt was extremely tight. and the belt is not rubbing the back of the cover at all, its lined up at the outer edge of the camshaft pulleys and has a few millimeters on the pulleys towards the motor