I have a timing belt that may be malfunctioning. My simple question is about the timing belt on the camshaft pulley. The tension side is on the left side, and the slack side is on the right side of the belt. Now, I'm wondering if, when I run the car on idle, and after I run it, the belt is now slack on the wrong side. Now it will appear to be slack on the left side, and on the right side of the belt it's tight, which is supposed to be the slack side? Is this supposed to be how it functions?
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When the car is off the belt could change slack sides. this depends on which side of the cam lobe a valve spring might stop due to where the engine is in rotation. cam lobe being on one side or another of a spring will change the cam's tension direction when off.
F22A1 engines use fixed mechanical tensioners that are set using a spring once during installation then locked. the belts are meant to only stretch the tiniest bit over their service life so there is no need for a hydraulic or spring tensioner. after such service life some amount of slack is expected.
what symptoms lead you to look at the timing belt in the first place? how many years/miles has it been since it was last replaced? -
Thank you for that explanation. What happened was that I got confused. Because originally, I did follow the manufacturer's method of tightening the belt several times. But it appeared as if I had the belt too loose. The belt itself was flopping around on the crankshaft. The first symptoms became clear. It was a weird ticking noise. It seemed like it came more from where the camshaft was, then the crankshaft. The only thing I noticed was that when I did follow that method. The belt does indeed tighten. I can tell when I put my finger on the belt, and it's much harder to pull the belt. Like I'm taking it off the camshaft. When this occurred, there was no belt walking off the camshaft. And I thought that tightening the tensioner bolt itself gradually made the belt tighter and tighter. I saw a post on a honda forum where a guy said his car sounded/ran horrible. So he fixed it by just adjusting that tensioner bolt, it was too tight. I don't believe that makes the belt tighter gradually, it just locks the tensioner in place. I also got an oil flashing indicator a couple of times.
I did, however, find information indicating, that this noise would eventually go away. And it did. The second thing I did, was take information from another car forum, stating to really tighten the belt a littler more. I had to take that other bolt off near the spring. It is a must to have it at least a little loose when you tighten the belt. But if you have that bolt in, and you tighten things down the way it is after you tighten the belt. So what I did was take it out completely . And I even tried moving the tensioner itself up even further. Now, that's when it started doing its walking off. So another problem had occurred, and it seems like this time, I got it too tight. So, finally, I just readjusted it the way I had it originally. This worked for a while. But again, it kept on trying to walk off the cam. I got it to the point where now I have the engine to warm up. And it's now surging on and off. I did notice that it didn't walk off the camshaft. The car is really sounding right; it's just that surging.
I thought it was a symptom of either a very tight belt or a very loose belt. I finally realized that the symptom had to do with the ECU being irritated by an air pocket in the system. So finally, I started dumping coolant into the system. And it just stopped doing it. So now I had everything right. I had to deal with the camshaft walking off the belt problem. I got it where it only slightly goes a tad over it. When I moved the belt a little on the water pump, it seemed to really help. I ran it 3 times, I turned it off and on. I think I do have it. It almost seems like when I place my hand on the belt from the crankshaft that the belt would be loose down there and sometimes too tight.
Your explanation does make sense. Because it does seem to change in tightness when I have it on TDC, and it seems to change. I suppose what I will do next is just test the car without power steering and the alternator belt connected. And I will have the lower timing belt cover connected. I want to see if it runs normally. The belt walking off the camshaft really does worry me. By the way, I'm using a new tensioner, and it's a KOYO.
I know that the belt itself that I replaced has to at least been more than 10 years and possibly 15 years before I replaced it. I'm just guess it's last change maybe was at 150,000 miles. I heard it was done twice. The old timing belt did have superficial cracks. Now the balance shaft belt looked to be more worn with cracks actually seeking into the belt.
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