I am so close to getting yet another Honda of mine on the road. I am down to the timing belt and lash adjustment with the engine still on the stand. I have the tensioner adjusted all the way and the belt just seems too lose for my liking. Here's what I have going on along with the B20 bottom end:

Milled B16 head
GSR/ITR Timing belt & water pump (22 teeth)
B20 stock tensioner

I suppose the rest of the details of the build are completely unimportant here. The milling on the head is slight. I can turn the whole assembly on the stand just fine, and from looking at it, it looks tight. But I can twist the timing belt around and I don't like that at all. The way this is now is definitely good enough to adjust my valve lash, but I just don't trust this amount of slack once its running underneath the hood (and going out to Miller for a tune). I have put the best of parts and spared no expenses into this motor. I have definitely spent too much money for this to go south right now, so I'm hoping someone might know a trick or two to tighten up this belt!

Is there another tensioner that might be helpful to me? I'm sure I'm not the first guy on H-T to run a B20 or LS/VTEC with a milled head. If those of you who are wiser to this problem, I'm awaiting any kind of advice that can make this one last headache go away! While some may say, "Run it the way it is," this just isn't up to par with my standards and I don't trust it as it sits.

 

bump

 

put the motor to TDCS.
make sure everything is lined up and when ur sure everything is, loose the tensioner. Take a coathanger and bend one too where you can hook it underneath that lip where the spring sits on the tenionser. Before you pull up make sure that rotate your crank pull a teeth or two to pull the slack outta the front of the belt..
Once this is done, pull up as hard as u can on the lip sticking out and tighten down the tensioner.. you might wanna get a friend to pull up and u tighten its kindof hard to do with one person but ya you'll be fine.

 

Ok, but bend what exactly? The spring?

 

no.. if you look on your tenioner.. There's a lip that comes out, that the spring hooks on too, thats apart of the pully.. Pull that UP.

 

is the nipple in the top right part of the tensioner for it to pivot on?

 

yes.

 

ok i tried that. i had that thing all the way and it was still loose.

another thing i tried was an LS timing belt. that belt fits like a glove! will there be any ill effects from running an LS timing belt with a type-r water pump? i didn't try to rotate the assembly but i can promise you that i didn't run into any problems with proper tensioning!

 

ummm that shouldn't have worked at all...

 

why not? its only a hair shorter

 

any reason i should run into any problems with this? the 22t wp should still spin a little bit slower than the 19t pump. the non-vtec belt is like butter on this thing whereas the type-r is too long

 

OK... if there are no objections then LS timing belt it is!

After 10 rotations on the stand I'm still lined up perfectly. Consider me an innovator then with my LS timing belt, ITR water pump combo

 

I've built one ls/vtec setup and now have a b20 vtec setup i just finished and with both motors i have with a gsr/type r timing belt its tight but with the head being milled that would lower the cams giving you slack so it would make it loose. the whole reason you cant use a ls timing belt is because its too short it wont make a differance on how anything spins just a shorter belt. But if you actually look at the post on hondatuning magazines website about building an lsvtec setup they use an ls timing belt. dont know why or how it would work but probably over read something. but i also read its better to use adjustable cam gears because when doing an ls/vtec setup your not able to get the timing 100 percent perfect because of length of the belt. Heres the link to it check it out.. just my input

http://www.hondatuningmagazine.com/t.../photo_16.html

 

I don't know why some people say it doesn't work, or it shouldn't work... Believe me it works! I had both belts stretched in my hands and I couldn't tell the difference until I put it on the motor. If you mill your head this belt is perfect. I would even be willing to go as far as to say that even without a head mill this is a better fit. Maybe I'm wrong with that last statement, but with daintegrajdm's link to Honda Tuning's write up, I feel even better about using this belt.

 

i have a gsr belt on my b20/vtec and my belt is pretty snug on there. and i could tell a good differance in length of belts. I first built a b18a1 bottom with a b17a1 head(same as b16). Now i have a b20b with the b17 head. it really depends on where you bought the belt. i have had alot of problems with part stores giving me the wrong parts. Like cam seals the seals down by the cam gears. i have yet to get a set of dohc vtec cam seals from a part store they keep selling me ls cam seals. So its possible that they could have sold you wrong belts but it wouldnt explain why one would be snugger