I upgraded to TODA B's. Rainy season, no garage, so I had a shop swap the Springs and retainers with Omnipower ones, Greddy Timing belt, New Head gasket and throw in the cams.

As soon as the car is started, the timing belt flaps around a lot. Adjusted and adjusted still the same, spoke to a few people was told that it seems to be common with Strong belts and stronger springs. So I let it be. Not even 1000 miles I notice the TB is shredded on the outside edge.

I take the Cover off and the belt is chewed up from both edges.
take timing belt off and the back cover against the head, behind the cam gears is loose and the belt had been rubbing against it. Must be the cause for the damaged belt and all the noise and flapping.

The Greddy belt had a couple of autocrosses, by the time I took the belt off the teeth were ready to pop off.


Tighten down bolt for cover, new OEM belt. The car starts but still same effect of flapping and noise. Cannot figure it what else so I let it be, perhaps 4 startup and warm up cycles in the time of 2 weeks, NO DRIVING AT ALL, I notice the belt is being shred again.


Click to view TB pics

Take it all apart, talk to a shop they recommend changing the tensioner and water pump. 70K + miles on the car I figured it can't hurt. After replacing the parts the belt still flaps and makes a lot of noise. The timing belt flaps about 1 inch total from its center This belt only has about 30 minutes of run time, will need to drive around to see if it is being beat up as the others.

INFO:
The camgears do not wobble, the cams are tight down, and everything along the oil pump looks good. One thing though, the dampener on the Crank Pulley is cracking and shrinking, much like bushing do when they are old.


1. Now withe stiffer springs the cams are very difficult to turn, I have to pull and then they pop over the springs, actually hurt to move by hand.
Could this be why the belt flaps? Normal for stronger springs.

2. The timing belt seem to stick out about 1mm off the cams ( towards the driver wheel)?

Is this normal?

Video links are below. The Timing belt cover is off for viewing purposes only.

A. Motor is started not warmed up yet.

http://www.stingbee.com/ITRpic...5.avi

B. Throttled
http://www.stingbee.com/ITRpic...6.avi

C. Motor is at idle
http://www.stingbee.com/ITRpic...7.avi

Any help is appreciated, Do not know why the belt is being shred.

Thank you.




Modified by Renegade at 12:46 AM 4/27/2005

 

The information on your drive train doesn't really have a bearing on this situation. Your belt should not be deflecting up to 1". You should seriously consider NOT driving the car until you fix this issue. You could end up ruining your engine!

I was going to guess the tensioner but you replaced that. Though the tensioner could have been improperly installed/faulty from the get go. Do you have the plastic safety covers on the engine? If so, I would take those off and see if there is anything that is eating the belts.

It is shredding so fast because there is obviously a foreign object in the way of the belt that you NEED to get out of the way. These are my guesses.

 

i had a buddy with the same problem once. it ended being his t belt tensioner bolt and thread(on the block) is worn. a new bolt and lock tight with lock washer fixed the problem.


btw he was using toda springs and belts.

 

I have looked under the covers and nothing rubs against the belts, I've used a borescope and looked down into the cover the the oil pump gear and it does not rub. It sits in the middle of the water pump gear and the Tensioner.

I guess I can't see much if it rubs on the valve cover. I will check for that this afternoon.

most of the noise comes from the head and not of block. Like i said the cams are very hard to turn by hand, I'm sure that has some effect on the timing belt.

thanks for the response.

 

esponet :
the belt does not move anymore that when it is first adjusted. If I take the tensioner off the bolt tightens to as far down as the thread goes, lower than the Tensioner.

I will keep that in mind though, next time I take everything off.

 

.....do a search for coathanger method here in the itr forum.

I'd happily retension your belt for you if you're nearby. (I'm in ATL.)

Do not run the motor until the timing belt is properly tensioned. It has not been - that much is obvious. Do not make the assumption that just because a shop has touched it, anything has been done right.

 

I should have mentioned that, I did the coathanger tensioner. Got that from the shop when they did the first install.

I will try that a few more times then.

 

Are the cam gears fully seated on the cams, ( all the way on and not binding inside of keyway area)???

 

Cam gears are fine, not even a wobble.
I would feel it when I turnen by hand, but I will make sure again.

I will check on all the comments in a little while when I go home.

 

wow, that's a ton of deflection. I would assume that that in and of itself would account for the belt shredding. Some of those big jumps in the video would contact something. the only thing I have ever seen make a belt shred was leaving the outer washer off of the crank. Though after 1000 miles it would have long since sawed through the cover. I have done more T-belts than I could ever count and for the life of me I can't see how this is happening if the belt was properly tensioned. I'll definately keep an eye out for your results. Good luck.

 

ok the the t belt is tigther pretty much half as the play as in the video. Forgot the camera at work. I do hear a low squeaking down by the oil pump.

How can I tell if the oil pump is going bad?

Perhaps the oil pump bearing is shot or getting there. I did not feel any play when I had the pulley off, but sometimes you just can't tell by wiggleling it.

 

when i "had" AEM cam gears the timing belt kinda sat in the same location. the belt never hung over the edge like yours did but it was defiantly not centered.

i would change your cam gears timing belt tensioner and go from there........you need to properly tension that belt......it seems awfully loose.

 

damn.. that looks dangerous as hell

 

Mine used to do that. Drove it for like 2k miles and it snapped. I don't know how it snapped probably to much play and the crank would just keep yanking it from the cams and the spring pressure was just too strong or something but then I changed it and adjusted the tensioner by the 3teeth counterclockwise **** and started it up and still did it. Then I learned the screwdriver/coat hanger method and tensioned it up by that and now it doesn't wobble that much.

 

I pretty much put the tighten it up at TDC with the hanger, then rotated to a in beween where the belt was the loosest and then I tighten it up some more. That is the most I could do.

Also, the pump does not have a bearing. Looked up the drawings on the web.

 

at TDC how much play do you have on the exhaust side?

 

not much, pretty much normal play, the problem is when the cams are turning.

I noticed last night, when the cams get to that point to compress the springs the Tbelt lifts off the Intake camgear, probably 1/3 the height of the tooth. When themotor is running I don't see anything, but that could be beacuse it is happenign so fast. This is why I mentioned that the problem could be the stiff springs.
The cranck pulls the cam gears from the exhaust as it pushes up the intake, as soon as the cams compress the springs and pass, there is extra slack on the belt and vice versa for the intake side.

I have to drive this for a little while longer, as I said the belt is tighter now and and it does not worry me as much anymore compared to how it was before. I will keep and eye on the condition of the belt, pretty much everytime I drive it. But the cams will be coming out soon, debating if to remove the springs as well. A JRSC is on its way, so the stock cams have to go back in and at that point the OEM springs can go back in.

I will take video of the Tbelt now when I go home during lunch and post it.

 

COATHANGER METHOD:

-put the crank at tdc.

-put the jack hook tool thingy in cyl #1 spark plug hole (remove spark plug first).

-put coathanger hook into the tensioner eyelet that the lower part of the spring is pulling on.

-now have someone pull with all their might up on that coathanger.

-at this point, loosen the tensioner bolt by a good 2 full turns (to make sure it's not putting any friction on the position at all.

-now your buddy is still pulling up with all his might and complaining about how the coathanger is cutting into his hands.

-ignore your buddy and rotate the crank with a ratchet about 3 teeth on the timing belt. yell at your buddy to pull up with all his might. call him a sissy bitch to motivate him.

-notice all the slack disappear from the firewall side of the belt, then notice most of the slack disappear from the top side of the timing belt at the cam gears, and rotate the crank a little further (up to 90 deg on the cam gears from the original starting point), and notice all of the slack disappear from the bumper side of the timing belt.

-now keep yelling at your buddy not to let off on pulling with all his might on the coathanger. Get your 14mm 6pt socket on the tensioner bolt and crank it back down tight. Now hit it with the torque wrench to make sure it's perfect.

-Now and only now may you let your buddy stop pulling up on the coathanger.

-Rotate the crank a couple times by hand to make sure the belt is nice and tight. It's probably too tight, so you'll have to go back and loosen it a bit using the same method as above (just not yelling at your buddy quite so much) - but it sure won't be too loose.

-You'll get the hang of it after a while. The belt usually gets a little tighter when the motor gets warm, so take that into account. I run my belts with very little slack. I keep a tiny little bit, but not anything near as loose as what the helms recommends. Stiff valvesprings will mandate that you do what I have listed above or reap the consequences.

 

Ok, so ordered new gaskets and parts, when I received the new Crank pulley washer I compared it to the one on the car, and as you will see below the washe is either the wrong one, but obviously defective. Comparing to the new one it does not have the concave shape it should, so when looking at it the concave way to load is actually the wrong way. It looks like a washer that was ran over and theconcave edge is acutally flap and it is also a little warped.





I put in the new one, worked on tightening the TB with the coat hanger process for about an hour. I cycled through all four cylinders a few times, then again slowly, a fee teeth at a time and checked tension through it all. It was all tight.

Started the motor let it idle for about 30 mins, while I changed wheels. reved it a buch of times by pulling on the throttle cable and minimal flapping.
the car started smoothly,much quieter than the usual chattering of the belt. Again nothing out of the ordinary.

So I took it for a test drive and to get gas, had been on E all week.

Went to the gas station, got gas. Driving down the street I step on it lightly, but enough to hit VTEC. After that it started to jerk lightly, when I let off the throttle the car turned off. Tried to start and I heard the valves hitting.
Looked under the hood, and the the Cam gears are not lined up. I think the gears jumped the belt.
All in All, positive that i will need to rebuild the head, hopefully no damage to the pistons, but either way it was coming soon for a rebuild.

I will take it apart today and try to find out what happened.

As I said before all was lined up, the belt was tesioned through out the entire cycles of the cranck, and it idled and reved up wiht not problems or weird noises.

I will post more pics when I take it all apart.

 

Damn that sucks. Good luck with the rebuild.

 

damn thats a shitty outcome

makes me wanna go tighten my belt again even though I just did it recently.

good luck, hopefully its not damaged too bad.

 

You can adjust the tension of the timing belt w/o the lower timing cover.

Get everything in time and snug up the tensioner using the normal method. Now, remove the crank pulley and lower timing cover and retension the belt.

With the lower cover off it allows you to better adjust the belt tension (rotate three teeth and torque tensioner bolt while pressing on the tensioner).

This is a trick I used when nothing else would tension the belt correctly (even with brand new components).

Have fun.

-kenji

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Fat Bradstard &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Damn that sucks. Good luck with the rebuild. </TD></TR></TABLE>

FUGGG... I read the thread and watched the videos... and saw the date so I figured "Ooh, he must have figured it out!"

Guess not. Damnit.

Edit: So, do you blame the cams? Toda B?

-Chris

 

Kenji- I read about that process earlier today, too late, but i will use it next time. Don't know why I did think about it though, when I spent so much time worrying about the belt and figuring out how I could tighten it better. I guess just spent too much time working on it.

Chris F - I don't blame the cams, but I do think the stiff Springs make the tightening more difficult. Like I mentions earlier, when the begin to turn the crank and the cams hit the point when they start to compress the spring the belt on the intake side starts to lift, until the crank pulls on the exhaust side and then the cams begin to rotate together. It seems to be a lot of work for the belt and Crank. I have to find out what type of springs they are exactly, maybe they are too stiff for full race setups, I don;t know for sure.

I have a brand new head sitting around, just need the valves and springs. It is not that bad, just really want to get a new block since it will be down, but $$$ is tight right now.

 

Question: Why do you have to use the "coat hanger method"? Do the instructions outlined in the Helms (pg 6-47) not work? Or is it something that you only have to do with an aftermarket valvetrain and such...?