Just a quick question... I am doing a hg swap and some upgrades probably cam gears and high flow oil pump. I have seen lots of photos of 420a engines with no outer timing covers on them. Does the cover serve any fucntion? Will crud get into my the timing belt/pullies/tensioner and mess them up faster if I leave it off?

probably not. of the hundreds ive seen w/ the cutouts ive only heard of one person who had something get in there. also..i drove my eclipse around for 4 years without a lower tbelt cover w/ no problems.

when i removed mine, i fabricated a shield out of alluminum underneath the car to prevent any rocks or debris from entering there. i'll show pics whne i have the chance. wait till you see it, i think it also improves on aerodynaimcs since wind passes better from underneath.

I have removed both covers and have had no problems. It will technically shorten the belt life a little bit (say 50K instead of 60k mile replacement. That's just a rough guess, and with the cover off there is no excuse to keep an eye on the belt condition anyway)

I would probably keep the lower splash guard on the car on the passenger side since that would help keep some water and other junk off the bottom of the engine (and off the timing belt) to some degree.

I'd cut and remove the upper cover, but leave the lower cover in tact. That makes it easy to service this area in the future without making you vulnerable to rocks, etc. It will look like this:



Corbin

'95 ESI-T
Now with more power and fewer leaks



Gimme fuel...Gimme fire...Gimme that which I desire

Originally posted by Corbin
I'd cut and remove the upper cover, but leave the lower cover in tact. That makes it easy to service this area in the future without making you vulnerable to rocks, etc. It will look like this: Corbin '95 ESI-T Now with more power and fewer leaks Gimme fuel...Gimme fire...Gimme that which I desire

That's exactly what I did. Protects the timing belt, but dosen't make it a pain to get to that stuff when you need to.

I'd say leave it on, 100%. It sucks, it's a pain in the ass to deal with, and it looks like ass, but it will protect the timing belt. If something gets into that area while the engine is running, that's $500-1500 of damage right there. If anything can possibly go wrong, it probably will, especially to poor fucks like me who have terriable luck with cars.

My alternator belt fell off about a month ago, but it fell off the wrong direction - it was eaten up by the timing sprocket. Kinda weird, because it's fallen off a few times before but never like this. I'm guessing that the alternator belt between the timing belt and the timing sprocket caused the crankshaft to advance, but the cams stayed where they were. When I took the head off it was not pretty, all of the rockers on the intake site were knocked off the lifters, and all of my valves were bent.

Originally posted by ner947
I'd say leave it on, 100%. It sucks, it's a pain in the ass to deal with, and it looks like ass, but it will protect the timing belt. If something gets into that area while the engine is running, that's $500-1500 of damage right there. If anything can possibly go wrong, it probably will, especially to poor fucks like me who have terriable luck with cars. My alternator belt fell off about a month ago, but it fell off the wrong direction - it was eaten up by the timing sprocket. Kinda weird, because it's fallen off a few times before but never like this. I'm guessing that the alternator belt between the timing belt and the timing sprocket caused the crankshaft to advance, but the cams stayed where they were. When I took the head off it was not pretty, all of the rockers on the intake site were knocked off the lifters, and all of my valves were bent.

The exact same thing just happend to my buddies talon. Just leave it on guys. Its not worth the problems it could cause to take it off. USLESS, you are running cam gears and are doing a LOT of tuning. Even then....

I had snow get in there once and it peeled my timing belt off the crank, I'll never do that shit again.

Originally posted by 97xtc
I had snow get in there once and it peeled my timing belt off the crank, I'll never do that shit again.

thats why you leave the bottom half on

thanks guys, I think il go with the 1/2 cut off method since I cant fabricate anything out of metal :)