please HELP with 8v timing belt

[janus]

Hi Folks,

sorry for this long thread but i'm just fed up with those. let me first say i've always hated timing belts. i've lost my Golf Mk2 due to a failed t-belt and more recently i broke the cam and thereby screwed my head on the daytona because the belt was apparently too tight.
so i got a used head and had the cam bearing tolerances checked out to be okay. i then purchased a 88kmls 2.2 TBI cam and put on my cam sprocket from the broken cam. this time, tension on the belt should be correct (or so i thought) as i'm able to twist it 90 degrees on the longest stretch(!?). i've put about a 1000 miles on the car cruising around and sometimes using it for my daily commute in the past 2 months since the reassembly and it's been running nice.

now here's the problem in my current situation: that 1000 miles old timing belt looks as if it has put 80% of its life span behind already so i knew something was in the wrong AGAIN with this effin belt and parked it for now.
please help me with troubleshooting this timing belt tension, i don't want to screw up another head and cam

after having talked to Jay (GLHNSLHT2) i thought i could hunt the correct tension down by looking at belt position on the cam sprocket: too much tension would make the belt ride on the outer edge (away from the motor) and too loose would make it move to the inner edge. that seemed like a pretty good procedure so i was going to try this today. Jay also told me he thought the belt is being screwed up by the edge of the tensioner because of this, which also seemed to make sense to me.

so after having spent the better half of my sunday, trying to sneak my hands and wrenches in there with the other pulleys and belts (PS, alt) still in there to check out various tensioner settings, i'm fed up because regardless of belt tension it always rode right next to or on the outer edge of the cam sprocket, indicating too tight tension

maybe you guys can tell me some other method you are using to find the correct tension, or what i'm doing wrong with this method Jay recommended to me.. i'm starting to guess that something else is in the wrong here. any comments and input appreciated!

here are some pics for reference:




btw as you might be able to see the belt is a Gates PowerGrip HD 124x24mm..

Thanks in advance,
greetz

[BadAssPerformance]

Couple thoughts...

You mention "can turn 90°" ... this is supposed to be atest that you do and can turn it fairly easily to 90°, not "with all of your might".

Does your timing belt "sing"? A too-tight belt will often make a wierd noise that I cannot type out in words.

The stuff on the back of the belt? the only way that go tthere is from the tensioner being dirty or sh!t down by the crank pulley. Almost looks like CV axle grease, did you lose one recently on the PS axle? Maybe clean everything a tad?

[Force Fed Mopar]

Or it's rubbing on a cover down by the I-shaft gear. I tension mine to be twisted 90* w/ moderate strength. My belt would always walk around on the pulley a bit, sometimes I'd shut it off and it'd be at the outer edge, sometimes at the inner edge. Never had it come off or snap or give any problem in over 2 years daily driving.

[minigts]

Or it's rubbing on a cover down by the I-shaft gear. I tension mine to be twisted 90* w/ moderate strength. My belt would always walk around on the pulley a bit, sometimes I'd shut it off and it'd be at the outer edge, sometimes at the inner edge. Never had it come off or snap or give any problem in over 2 years daily driving.

Ditto on everything he said. Mine will be on the outer and inner part of the gear.

[GLHNSLHT2]

those pics do show it's more grease than anything. Here's the one I saw yesterday http://i37.tinypic.com/2ccozs2.jpg Looked somewhat shredded in that pic.

After seeing those pics I'd say try cleaning it off and just running it. If you can twist it and it's not slapping, or making a whining noise, and not shredding on the tensioner(been there/done that) then it might just be ok.

But I do understand your reservations about not wanting to destroy another cam and head.

[minigts]

Maybe the gear is damaged in some way?

[janus]

I'll try to clean the belt up a bit. I know that my lower half of the engine bay is quite greasy and a bit oily. Unfortunately that's how i got the car and it's still like that
I have heard about a too tight belt making a singing noise, but can't verify this since i don't know how that would sound..

The 90° twist test, do you twist the belt on the tensioner or distributor gear side stretch? Understood what you are saying about the strength required for twisting.

@Jay, sorry i didn't mean to badmouth you or the procedure you recommended to me at all, i really respect your help. it's just that your method, which seemed really like it would help me, didn't turn out the way i hoped for and by then i was really upset with this cr*p in the pic i sent you yesterday it is indeed a bit hard to see anything, so i thought i'd take better pics today and start this thread. btw how do i really check it's not shredding on the tensioner?

you can still see the belt has been shredded a bit on the outside here, so there's more to worry about than the grease..


some more thoughts:
i did loosen the t-belt to the point it was making a slapping motion and noise and it didn't move one bit on the gear, so that procedure didn't work for me.
also, it's possible the tensioner is the one from 1992. oh and i forgot to mention i don't have any covers on there.
i've actually been thinking of a damaged cam gear as well. has anyone ever had these come out of round or something? when looking at the gear with engine running it sometimes looks like it's wobbling a bit, but i'm not sure about that. i also took a short clip i forgot to upload in my earlier post. the belt is pretty loose in this clip, maybe it helps to indicate any present wobbling, dunno, here you go:

as for the gear being the culprit.. i still have a stock Turbo cam with a gear on it that i could try. but is there any chance i can swap the cam without losing the correct timing??

thanks for your input. keep the good stuff coming

[minigts]

...

as for the gear being the culprit.. i still have a stock Turbo cam with a gear on it that i could try. but is there any chance i can swap the cam without losing the correct timing??

thanks for your input. keep the good stuff coming

I wouldn't worry about trying to keep the other gears in place, but you could try. I just thought maybe something was wrong with the gear because of the issues you seem to be having in general.

[janus]

I wouldn't worry about trying to keep the other gears in place, but you could try. I just thought maybe something was wrong with the gear because of the issues you seem to be having in general.

Hmm, if the gear is bad i would suspect it only went bad during the period i was running breaking-a-cam-tight belt tension? and i would also be shocked if a gear like that can be damaged this way
so do you think a cam swap like this is possible or not? i suppose i would just crank till the cam is at 12 o'clock, the timing mark on the flywheel lines up and then loosen the tensioner, swap in the other cam and re-tension it? not sure if this is gonna work..

[GLHNSLHT2]

@Jay, sorry i didn't mean to badmouth you or the procedure you recommended to me at all, i really respect your help. it's just that your method, which seemed really like it would help me, didn't turn out the way i hoped for and by then i was really upset with this cr*p in the pic i sent you yesterday it is indeed a bit hard to see anything, so i thought i'd take better pics today and start this thread. btw how do i really check it's not shredding on the tensioner?

Oh no offense taken at all. I was just repeating what worked for me most of the time and what is quickest and easiest to try. Years ago on my GLH I actually had to put a washer behind the tensioner because it was shredding on the belt but it was what I think was the right tension at the time.

[thedon809]

Mine has always rode on the outer edge of the gear too. Haven't had any problems like that though. I did snap a cam in half from too tight of tension. Head was fine. You could just swap the gear from the turbo cam onto the cam you have in the car. Just set #1 cyl to TDC, loosen belt, loosen cam gear bolt, put new gear on, line marks up, tighten everything down, and you should be good to go.

[thefitisgay]

mine was eating away at the passenger side of the belt to i never had one do that till when i put the belt on and the belt was like about an 1/8 inch over the lip on the tensioner and started it like that.... well it sliced the belt and even though i lined the belt up swapped different tensioners it kept eating the belt on that side i dont remember if i ever changed the belt

BUT even though it was like that it loved high revs and i ran it like that for idfk 10k miles? my odometer is broke, never had anything bad happened because of it never spit the belt never snapped the belt and i never figured it out till the motor blew up and thats when i stopped caring

i do remember reading somewhere (i think) that the tensioners are different going from ncb and cb but i could be makin stuff up

[janus]

okay some more questions and thoughts:

how do you guys remove the gear from a cam? put some vice grips on the cam between some lobes and use a 18 or 19mm nut with a long bar to break the bolt free? that's what i did but then again that cam was not in the motor plus it was broken anyways

@thedon, well i snapped the cam between intake and exhaust of #1 cyl so my head was pretty screwed up on the #1 bearing and cap, and i think some more serious scuffing on another bearing, can't remember. anyways #1 bearing was messed up badly...


so what do you do you guys think, clean things up a bit, make sure tension is set right so i can twist it with little/medium strength and hope i'm good? i could then watch out for the singing noise and more belt shredding and maybe change the gear if things don't get better?

btw i noticed the tensioner chris is offering looks different and doesn't have the 27mm head on the excenter but instead is round? is that the ncb tensioner?

[minigts]

Hmm, if the gear is bad i would suspect it only went bad during the period i was running breaking-a-cam-tight belt tension? and i would also be shocked if a gear like that can be damaged this way
so do you think a cam swap like this is possible or not? i suppose i would just crank till the cam is at 12 o'clock, the timing mark on the flywheel lines up and then loosen the tensioner, swap in the other cam and re-tension it? not sure if this is gonna work..

Man I don't know. I wouldn't expect the gear to go bad either, but I was also thinking you broke a cam AND now have the belt riding issue. But after looking I saw the original poster was someone else. I've never had issues like this, so I was trying to throw something out that didn't appear to have been brought up before. I hope you figure out what the deal is though, I know it's frustrating to have some problem persist without knowing what is causing it. I've been there too many times with my car.

[janus]

but I was also thinking you broke a cam AND now have the belt riding issue. But after looking I saw the original poster was someone else.

Well, actually i do. And actually, i am the original poster
anyways, talking about frustration, i haven't got a whole lot out of this car so far in those 3 years i've owned it. i can't take another downtime because of the same issue again (cam breakage & head mess)

[johnl]

If the broken cam caused damage to the last journal, with too much clearance, then the cam may be bending, causing the belt to ride incorrectly, a good reason to run it as loose as you can. This assumes that the same head is in place, of course.

Tight belts are a bad idea, run em on the loose side, a tight belt sucks power too.

[GLHNSLHT2]

it's not the same head

[janus]

right on i got a 'new' used head and even had its tolerances checked out on the cam bearing towers.
thanks anyways for the input. just keep it coming guys.

[turbovanman²]

It looks a tad loose, try giving it a tad more tension.

Can you take a pic of belt at the tensioner and crank pulley.

I agree with everyone that says clean that oil/grease up,

[thefitisgay]

i say beat the ---- outa it... (unless parts are rare/expensive there but thats a given)

thats it we need a poll