Yabo

Well, i'm planning on going and doing my belts may 23rd at the timing belt party posted a day or so ago. But before i went and drove around till then, i wanted to know for sure i had good tension on my belts. took off the top cover.. which came off suprisingly easy (i had never done it before). My dad is picking up a kricket later today.. but in the meantime i was just wondering if this looked loose to you? its hard to tell, both balance and timing belts both can twist about 90 degrees by that test.. but where the pictures are showing. it goes down a fair amount as you see, but doesnt go up too far without much force.. just wondering if anything looks wrong to you.






thanks

Yabo

oh and btw, in the last pic,, the belt doesnt touch the housing unless you put some stretch on the belt.. but not sure if thats bad in itself.

Zero10

Looks alright to me! =)

89magic98

Now, this is _without_ turning the crank pulley counterclockwise by 1.5 teeth, right? If so, that belt is pretty loose (because the engine rotation naturally tightens that section of the belt).

I think mine was that loose when I changed it.

On the other hand, you can do a lot of damage with a belt that is too tight.

Yabo

hmm, im confused kevin as to what you are talking about? Keep in mind i know basically nothing about the timing belt on these cars excpet they go and they kill valves and engines, and that you need to replace rollers and such. I just took off the cover and looked. the engine was run last week. so this is where it is, if this is wihtout turning the crank pulley, i dont know. But it does seem, that if you folow it up over the distributor and then just where it comes back into view, it is pretty tight right there compared to where my pictures are showing.. does that mean its tight?

Yabo

which would be on the first picture, the belt on the lower left, right below the mount for that belt guard...

tazman

What Kevin is talking about is to check the tension of the belts you are suppose to put the car to TDC then rotate back 1.5 teeth to check the tension. It sounds like you need to do a search and read up on the procedure if you really want to check the belts tension.

89magic98

I think I would leave it alone for now. It looks OK. I was thinking that my comment on the crank pulley might not be correct unless you turned the pulley clockwise by hand for two revolutions, the counterclockwise by 1.5 camshaft sprocket teeth.

Peckster

Read the section here. They talk about the twist method.

http://www.clarks-garage.com/

More on cricket use here.

http://www.blaszakprecision.com/Belts.html

83na944

The belt won't deflect as far up as down because of the roller.

Sounds like the belt passes the twist test.

You defintely need to read up on the procedure.