mobetta

02 A$ 18TQ

doing a tbelt, stealership sold my sister "Eveyrthing you'll need" but no tensioner????????? WTF!!!!!!!! I guess that is how They "price match", by shorting you on parts. like the most expensive one. I asked if it had the tensioner, and they told her it did. but all they sent is the pulley.

well, I got it all together w/ the old one, but I want to make sure everything is legit before I put it together.

so how do you tension the belt properly? I just loosened the 13mm nut, and used an allen to push the cam device to snug it up. I got it as tight as I can, but w/ out "pulling the ring" is this gonna be cool?

BTW- none of the We should've got parts from xxxxxxxx.com crap- I know we should've, but I had today open to do it, and she decided to spend a lil extra on dealership parts.

Thanks

ScratchRob13

Do not reuse old tensioner, that is the most prone part to fail, allowing the belt to slip.

Melinko bq

The tensioner the dealer speaks of is usually a hydraulic dampened and spring loaded cylinder. It pushes on the tensioner pulley and tensions all by itself - for the life of the belt. Sometimes it does not need replaced, but is worth it for what it costs now vs later.

In all cases, too tight is also a very common source of premature failure. It puts too much stress on the roller bearings (likely the tensioner pulley) and will cause it to overheat and fail. I'm guilty of this, but was for a different reason... I had a layered steel head gasket installed and it lifted the head a couple mm, timing belt fit, but was a bear to get on. Car started right up, after 100 miles I parked and smelled something... searched all over for the culprit to no avail. I decided to pull the timing cover next day to find a rainbow discolored tensioner... Belt had a few burn marks.

Anyway, tight is bad. Loose is bad. Both equally bad IMO. Search here for correct tension. On other cars where there's no automatic tensioner, there should be 10 mm of easy deflection, or you should very easily be able to twist the belt 90 degrees between cam gear and water pump - which is N/A in your case...

Melinko bq

Sorry - didn't see that you already named your model.... (DOH!)

ScratchRob13

there is the old 20v tensioner, which is reusable, and can tighten.