Dal Heger

Yea that's basically the only way they can fail. Well there is another form of failure, but it's very unlikely, and not catastrophic. The old style oil line that goes to the tensioner can crack and fail, but there is a pretty big spring that keeps the tensioner tensioned.

Dal.

mpw

Man that is ugly.

Fishey

So, Why not replace top pad at 100,000 and then the whole tensioner at 150,00 ?

jonnybgood

Dal, are you saying they will all fail? This is a common repair, mine included, and I want to believe that your cracking was due to other things than just the welding. Also, were you racing yours? Somehow I got the impression that you raced which would increase the stress on the engine but I cannot find it in the posts now.

I just went down and checked and of course no checkerboard for my 87!

mossy

From the way I understand, the most common failure is that the plastic that the guides are made from becomes brittle with age and simply breaks off. This leads to the mess that Joseph showed.
Makes me shudder looking at that pic, too many bad memories......

pete944

I was going from memory and it must be true that it's the first thing to go. I guess I don't have the 'checkerboard' head. I knew that mine was different from Fishey's. I must be getting dyslexia.
I plan to buy another S2 engine to rebuild for my car and I'll make sure that one has the 'checkerboard' head.

Hawk36

Thanks to all for the info...it's a bit overwhelming the number of replies. It will help me make my decision.

jonnybgood

Mossy, I know about the pad failure, I was asking Dal about the cracking in his head due to welding the tensioner mount back on.