Ziff951

If I'm getting ready to pop new belts on, and the cooling system works great, is it alright to just swap the belts or is it really stupid to not do the rollers and water pump anyway... I just don't have the time/cash right now to do the whole thing, but figured the belts would at least be smart, then do the seals, water pump, etc...when time frees up a bit. Thanks for the input. My first 951 tattooed a van before I really got to do a bunch of maintenance stuff.

Stephen

MM951

How do the rollers spin? They should spin quietly with a little resistance based on the new ones I've handled.

Also, do you have the updated water pump? If you already have the updated pump and the rollers seem to be decent, I'd say you can get away with just replacing the belts. A failing roller is also pretty obvious, so if you hear it replace it.

Ziff951

Cool...I'll check it out when I dig in. Thanks.

Chris White

Honestly – its worth doing the rollers and tensioners once you have stripped down the belt covers and belts. They are not that expensive and you don’t know when they were done last.

If you do reuse the old ones – the ones that spin really well…are dying. Good ones are smooth in feel but have enough drag from the seals and grease that they do not spin by themselves. Any play in the bearings and they need to be tossed.

Same goes for the waterpump.

ramius665

I would say do the tensioners/rollers and WP at the same time. Depending on your WPs age, you could have it fail 1k-10k miles down the road from having a new timing belt at proper tension on it. That happened to me and I was PISSED at myself for not spending $500 more at the time and knowing that it was all new. Certainly there are a lot of "while you're in there" projects that can pop up, but replacing everything in this case is money in the bank.

Darwantae951

After your initial WP/roller replacement, a general rule that I go by is to replace the WP and rollers every other TB change.

jerome951

How old & how many miles on the belts? If you're tight on cash, may want to just postpone the whole job until you can afford to do rollers and WP.

Tedro951

The belts are the cheapest part. If time is your enemy, I'd put the new belts on and plan an early "belts/pump/seals" for the next go round. My luck is I'd throw the extra 500 into the project and then a few WP studs would slow the whole show down....