GregBBRD

Anything is possible, but that is definitely not how it was worded....

And just to be technical....why spend any money to update to the black edition if a few dollars of hardware makes the gold exactly the same?

Colin is reading this thread, I'm sure he can clarify....because if I had a gold bracket, that wording would have definity induced a Cremaster Reflex.

Lizard928

Ken is a good guy and I like the stuff he has come up with.
But I wouldn't say that he and I are buddy buddy or have any insider trading.
I pull off the brackets as Sean does when a belt job is due and change the countersunk bolt, drill out the 2 holes and use through bolts.

Lizard928

Provide me with a phone number, I will speak to the shop in question.
I've rebuilt tons of these racks. I've only had one other have a seal failure which happened a month after the rebuild.
He drove over 20k after the rebuild. The insides of these racks are very simple and there is no way that any pieces were left out. If you leave any pieces out either the rack will not work or it will leak right away. There are no pieces that can be left out allowing the rack to last 20k+ km and then fail.

Regarding the tensioner, ship me his Porkensioner and I will ship you a factory S4 tensioner and arm that you can rebuild.
If you feel the way you do about the tensioner you're only going to cause further problems with the system so it would be best if you are going to work on that car to go with a system you're comfortable working on.

ROG100

We still supply the upgrade kits FOC to anyone who asks. Very simple upgrade.
Change in colour was to purely to distinguish gold (old) from black (new).
Price wise there was little if any difference gold to black apart maybe from % increase to cover material cost increases and such.

SeanR

There isn't any money involved. When I do the belt change i'm changing the roller and tensioner like any other time, only difference is drilling out the bracket. Not going to charge for that 5 minutes.

ptuomov

By the way, I found this exceptionally good service and real commitment to the product. One confirmed failure in about ten years and hundreds if not thousands of cars, and I got the upgraded hardware for free. Good job.

GregBBRD

Thanks for the clarification.

At this point in time, I believe that it is very important to be very precise about wording and what is said.

I think it is also important that everyone know exactly what pieces to use, what not to use, and why.

Pretty obvious from the OP's point of view...anyone that was encouraged to remove the lower roller and did so, better go back in and re-install it.

After all, I believe the majority of people installed this tensioner to save a few bucks, with the promise that it would work perfectly, one could install it and forget it, and to save a few bucks not adjusting the cam belt, down the road.

I'm guessing that one or two more engines full of bent valves is going to crush that idea and result in a mass exodus away from this idea.

GregBBRD

I think it is important to take a minute and tell people why I'm so dubious about new ideas that aren't tested like the factory would test them....especaily items that can cause catastrophic engine damage.

I've been working on Porsches for almost 50 years.

I've seen a wole bunch of ideas and products come and go, in that time.

Not sure exactly when....late 70's or early 80's, there was an aftermarket chain tensioner invented and marketed for 911s. (Note that a chain tensioner failure in a 911 engine almost always resulted in the same thing that a failure of the Portensioner will result in....bent valves and major engine work.)

All the big Porsche parts suppliers promoted these tensioner and sold them. I installed several dozen, myself.

Long story short...poor/lack of engineering. All of these tensioners failed...after several years of use.

Of course, the inventor and the company were gone before most of the big damage starting happening.

He bailed as soon as he saw a few of the first failures....took the profit and left.

I "ate" several engines. I "ate" a couple dozen of these tensioners, "eating" the labor and the cost of the these tensioners. Thousands and thousands of my own dollars.

So when Tuomo is yelling "FUD".....I'm quietly saying "experience".

ROG100

Actually not totally correct - it has only been in the last 12 months that the cost of rebuilding the tensioner and replacing rollers and such has become more expensive than buying the PKT. For most of the sales period - circa 10 years - the cost of the PKT was easily twice that of the original system.

Most customers purchase the PKT because they like the modern design and getting away from tensioning the belt at install and during regular use intervals.

Also removing the lower rollers was always a customer option but I thought we covered that in the other thread.

Hai gebissen

In my opinion, this is an option that should never be considered.

SeanR

FWIW, I've never heard it recommended to remove these lower rollers and have never done so. I have left the crapped out ones on a couple cars because the owner didn't want to spend the outrageous sum to replace them. The belt had not been touching them before and found no examples of them ever touching until Eriks video. Was only recently that I heard of the inexpensive bearing.

I'm betting that some of the ones on Rogers cars are still there (I did the work) and the ones he removed are long gone.

ROG100

I generally agree and the new instructions will probably confirm that. However you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

As the vast majority of PKT's are fitted by the owners they technically can do what ever they want and that is very much out of everybody's control.

I for one will not be going back on all my engines and replacing the lower rollers - but I am not a normal person 8>) Again we discussed that in the last thread.

Lizard928

I got shipped a countersink and a bunch of hardware so that when the cars come in for service I can modify anything to the PKT-B.
I was contacted when this happened (outside of RL) and told of the update. Great customer service if you ask me.

I think that there are better options than the factory lower roller that was installed to keep the belt from ever being able to pop out of the crank gear.

One thing that one could think that might help this is to put a toothed extension rod on the tensioner rod which would limit its reverse travel. This would prevent too much slack from the engine being rotated backwards.

Vilhuer

Few mm margin of error sounds very small to me. Best option would be to find another part which extends out more.

If that's not going to happen maybe implement solution where piston is moved further out and something added to it's top end to take up extra space. Some small hardened piece which can be changed to different height part to get adjustment on tighter end of the scale no matter what has been done to other parts.

jbrob007

Soooo... I understand you correctly, the black is a better design, but DOES NOT mean the gold design is prone to fail prematurely... Am I interpreting this correctly? I'd hate to have to go back in and redo the timing belt before it's due, but if it's something that NEEDS to be done then I'll get on it! We'll have her up in the air for 86.5 exhaust manifolds, motor mounts and "Y" pipe & new spark plug/coil wires installation next weekend. Let me know... Thanks!!