Tensioner breakdown.

The latest bit of automotive excitement that’s happened lately was the complete failure of my timing belt tensioner. When my first one froze up and was no longer tensioning, it caused the belt to shred teeth off from vibration. So I threw on a working tensioner that had 230k miles on it and carried on. Cruising along at 75mph, I heard a big bang, and found myself dead on the side of the highway. I figured it was the belt again and it took me a minute to notice that the tensioner was totally gone except for two small metal tabs still bolted to the block. I grabbed the tools and started tearing off parts while I called for reinforcements to be delivered from my stockpile of Sunbird parts from home. Once all back together, I realized I didn’t have my timing pointer installed, so I had to do some guesswork to find the right spot and get it to fire up. Anyway, it finally did and I pushed on and made it to work only 2 hours late.

tensioner shrapnel