Giovanni

We trailered the shark to SITM this year so our 2 girls could go with us. Sunday morning I left to DR's house and the TB light came on. I drove the car back to the hotel and towed it back home. This is the pic of the timing belt. I am glad we did not decide to drive it to SITM and back, I may be needing an engine rebuilt it we did.

mark kibort

did you check the tension?
what are those marks on the belt? wear marks?

Giovanni

The gears are worn out and I don't know when the TB/WP was replaced last time so I am changing them. I will check the tension after I put the new parts on :-)

marton

nasty

Giovanni

Nasty is an understatement :-).

Btw, what is the best TB/WP write up?

SeanR

Dang, that was a close one.

Reminds me I need to do the '90 soon, it's been 5 years.

SeanR

Gio, zip tie that power steering tank upright, you're putting undue stress on the lines.

dr bob

Gio-

Good catch!!

Looks like the belt was a little tired there where it sat parked on a sprocket for too long. MK, those are fractures in the rubber, through from the toothed side.

Best write up... I used the one on John Pirtle's tips page and had no troubles. Others think a lot of the manual that John Kelly has put together. It's a very detailed step-by-step guide.

Giovanni

Done

Check it out now. I was sure mine would have lasted another 2 years by looking through the peephole.

Thank Bob, I am checking John’s timing belt write-up



Btw, TDC is about 12 teeth off to the right when using the imprinted mark on the cam gears. It lines up with the white mark the PO put on there. Is that possible or am I doing something wrong?

aggravation

Now would be a good time to look into the PKsn'r...
It really gave me some peace of mind knowing the tension was being controlled by a more modern device that was proactive instead of a troublesome device with too many parts that is only, at it's best, reactive.

Giovanni

Oh yeah, I got a quote from Rog last week and will be calling him Monday to place the order.

Bill Ball

Gio:

The rubber in that belt must be rather brittle to crack like that. My first belt was 9 years old (but only 45K miles) when I changed it and it looked brand new with zero cracking no matter how much I folded it. Your belt must be ancient. You lucked out bigtime!

Joe '87 S4

Don't want to highjack the thread but I'm wondering the condition of your water pump if it was also 9 years old.

Giovanni

Lol, as things are looking with failing rebuilt water pumps I may just reuse my old w/p. I will take more pics tomorrow but the belt has some larger fractures. Some with fairline cracks on each side.

Btw, anyone has an idea why the cam marks are 12 tooth off?

SeanR

I pulled the TB/WP out of a car that had 1500 on the clock since the last change.

*23,000k car, last TB job done in 1994 at 21500 miles. Belt and water pump looked/acted brand new*

I'm keeping both parts just to see how they look from year to year. Amazing how they look now. I won't ever use them but man, 14 years, 1500 miles.

Which has nothing to do with this conversation.

I'm also tempted to put the Pktensioner on the '90 when I do the change. I've done one on a '94 GTS and was very impressed on how it goes together but there have been no miles put on the car, as of yet. It's a very well engineered set up but rebuilding the stock tensioner is easy and a proven tech. I dunno.