When I originally did the tension, I could slide a small drill bit in and out of the hole with very little effort. There was no resistance when inserting or pulling it out.

-Acree

 

you should have the tensioner rod. makes life 100x easier. if you back out the tensioner to fast it will screw the piston up in the hydraulic tensioner also. Just make sure you can slide the grenade pin in and out of the tensioner and that its going through the piston hole.. that is the easiest way to tell if you have perfect tension or are within spec. the tensioner pulley bolt gets like 36ft/lbs or something i forget.. but as you tighten the bolt it will change the tension as well, so you have to judge it all just right.

also when checking tension with teh grenade pin only do it when its in time when things line up the same.. every 6 rotations. dont turn the motor with the pin in, or it will bend the pin.

 

ya thats the idea. i just use the grenade pin, but you can use whatever fits in there. also mark your belt 2 places where it is on the crank sprocket it will make your life so much easier and you will not question your timing ever again. what i do when im doing a timing job is use zip ties. I take 2 socket wrenches and zip tie the one to the front of car theres a hole on the radiator support or whatever the front of the car you can put a zip tie on to hold the exhaust cam in place, and then the intake cam i just use a wrench and hold it and get belt on. if you have big arms then this sucks, mine are skinny so its all easy for me to do lol.

or you can zip tie 2 wrenches together and make them hold the cams in place .. bunch of ways to make the cams stay in place. the intake cam will have the most preload. when doing it like this youll have enough belt slack uptop to push down into like a U shape inbetween the cams, im sure you did this before with it out of car, so you know what im talking about.

when i tighten the tensioner pulley i jam a huge flat head screw driver between the waterpump and pulley to keep it still when torqueing.. hope some of this helps you.

 

Yeah we're talking about the same thing. I'm using a tensioner rod. But since the tension did not return after I removed the rod, I think the tensioner pulley turned.

-Acree

 

i edited my post above a lot.. hope it helps some. use a huge flat head and pry the pulley against the waterpump and it wont budge when u torque it down. you know the trick to using the tensioner rod? keep track how many turns it takes each time you do it.. the secret is knowing how much u need to turn that rod in order to get it to fall in place perfect. i can get perfect tension in 1 try now since i know how much the rod needs turned. the rod needs turned approx 1 1/2 turns.

 

When you use the tool to loosen the belt, all the slack in the belt moves up to the cams. All you need to do is gently roll the engine over a little bit and it will get tight again. Your eccentric pulley didn't turn...

 

+1 on that I have experienced that enough

great build cant wait to see it get fired up

 

man this sounds like a real pain in the @ss! i feel for ya Acree!

 

Did you get your belt tension and exhaust gear alignment sorted out last night?

 

Andrew,

I'm bored...if you need help over the next few days let me know (pm or call). I'm kinda done working on my car for now, and PlanoEvo isn't ready to start on his...so I'll be free to drive down and help u with yours.

 

**** look tuff, the 2.4 galants have the same setup only its single came, my co worker put the tensioner on to tight and it ate up the belt the next month

 

Thanks Derek. I'll let you know, but at this point I have everything under control. It will be a couple of weeks before I can get this thing wrapped up. There are some issues I need to resolve hardware wise and what not.

It does appear the block from MAP is in ok condition. It passed a leak down test last night. But I don't have compression yet. Soon. Very soon.

-Acree

 

On another note, KevinD was correct. The pulley didn't turn any. Tension returned just fine and I now fully understand the timing aspect. Thanks to tscompusa's suggestions and KevinD's guidance, I "shouldn't" have any more problems with that.

-Acree

 

Of course it is, it's a built shortblock with zero miles on it. I'm sure it's in much better than "ok" condition too...

 

I know when I used to do dsm timing belts i had to set the timing off 1 tooth then it would set itself back when you put tension on it, but on a evo it doesnt do it.. that might of been what confused you. It happened to me the first time I ever did a evo belt and was like wtf? lol.

did you get lots of slack uptop and have to push it down inbetween the 2 cam gears? thats how i do it and it works everytime.