Just wondering if anyone has experienced this with their car. I have the 91 Eclipse with the 2.0L Non-Turbo motor and on certain strokes the backside of the timing belt is loose to the point it sits off the crank teeth. But on other stokes the timing is tight all the way around. I have driven this car a few thousand miles since the timing belt was replaced and am confident the problem existed then. I do not know if I should be surprised the timing has not slipped or if this is standard with this motor. </P>


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you either have a failed hydaulic timing belt tentioner (common), or an incorrectly adjusted manual tensioner.</P>


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Thank you. I will check on that. I would not have thought of the tensioner being the problem since it has plenty of tension on certain strokes.

 

umm yeah, what he said.. (way over my head)

 

I had checked into it alittle more and I do not see how it is the tensioner. When the belt is loose, it is loose on the backside opposite the tensioner. On every stroke, the tensioner has tension on the front side. It can't take the tension out any more if it is always tight. I think there is another problem, but I have decided not to worry about it. The care has made it a couple thousand miles without it causing a problem, why fix something that is not broke.

 

the belt can seem loose if it's not on the right stroke... if it's loose all the time it's time for a new belt, if not.. then it's good to go.. most people change the timing belt around 60-80K miles on eclipse and talons</P>

 

I appreciate everyone's posts. The belt was new when I put it on because I just had the head work done. What I believe happened was when I put the new fixed head on, I did not unplug the battery from the car. So the car thought the settings for the timing belt should have been the same. I found out when I sprayed some engine degreaser under my car and some must have hit the belt and caused the belt to skip a few teeth on a gear when I cranked it over. I tore everything apart and reset the timing, this time unplugging the battery as any good mechanic should do. What does that say for me. lol. When I got the belt tight I spun the crank around several times to insure I hit every stroke and the belt seemed tight on ALL strokes. I started the car up and let it run for a couple of minutes and shut if off because I did not have the belts hooked up and I did not want the car to overheat. Once off, I heard this clicking noise. I looked down at the belt and it seemed looser and the noise was coming from the automatic tensioner. To make a long story short, I was told to let the car run for 10 minutes for the computer to retain the settings, so I ran the car for 10 minutes after I readjusted the tension on the belt and when I shut the car off, no clicking noise and the belt was still tight on all strokes.</P>


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So I learned something new and I thought I would pass it on to anyone else that might run into this problem someday. </P>


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Thanx again for all the help. This is a great forum.</P>