Alrighty, first of all, I am one tired mother fucker and its 1:18 in the morning... I hope I can explain and type this out well.

Byron (96eclipse2nr) and I just spent the whole day Saturday replacing my timing belt, pulleys and water pump. Well, more like Byron did it all by himself; god bless that dude, he has a 2 hour drive back home right now.

After everything got lined up correctly and we finally finished, I started her up. Obviously, she ran a bit rough, but the idle seemed to be perfect. I shut her off and we finished cleaning and headed back towards my place. On the way there, even if you ask Byron, she drove completely fine... at a stop light though, I noticed she was kinda misfiring at idle, but the RPMs were stable; no fluctuating. When we got to my house, I left the car on for a while and damn, was she misfiring like a damn hippie van... it was like the damn thing was cammed. He recommended I disconnect the negative to reset the ECU to see if that works. 15 minutes later, I reconnect the battery and fire her up; she starts up fine but she still has a misfire and then the CEL comes back on. Code 11... granted it could mean a whole lot of things, so I'll be taking her to Auto Zone to see what exactly the code is tomomorrow. What's strange though, is she drives completely fine... no backfire or hesitation, however, I was taking it a bit easy on her, to break her in. All she does is misfire at idle.

Things I'll be checking out tomorrow:
Front o2 sensor (replaced with a shitty Bosch about 2-3 months ago)
Coil pack (MSD)
Wires (MSD)
pull the plugs out, I'll probably change 'em too; white tips

Now, Byron and I had a really hard time lining up the timing marks (she was being a dirty whore), but we got it as close as damn near possible, if not right there at 'perfect' TDC. Do you guys think the timing could be off, because she was completely fine before the timing belt change... but you know what they say, when you replace one thing, something else will bound to break.

... awck, I gotta sleep!

sounds like the timing is off, it has to be perfect.

yeah if the car is idling like a big block v-8 than your timing is off, almost only works with handgrenades it has to be dead on or your not lined up, i know its a pita but you gotta take it all apart again and re align your belt, it get easier everytime you do it, i can have my belt off inside an hour. i had a hard time with lining things up both times i did it but i didnt put it all back together till it was dead on. i had to scrap what the manual said about turning it 1/2 notch before tdc and all that crap to line it up and i just set it at tdc and kept the belt tight as i went around the sprockets and ecerything after about the 10th try i got it dead on. good luck, oh and your car will run perfectly normal like nothing is wrong it will just idle rough as hell if your a 1/2 or more off. sometimes you get a cel sometimes you dont. bad thing is that rough idle will cause your belt to skip teeth and i dont think i need to inform you of what happens when your timing gets off several teeth. end result, it has to be fixed or eventually your motor will go by by

Shit, I think I'll just have to end up taking it to a shop tomorrow.

Ball park range, how much do you think a shop would charge me for adjusting the timing correctly? My shop quoted me $200 for labor when I had the parts off the car. Now that they're are on, it's as simple as lining everything back up... haha, I think I'm just trying to make myself feel better. I'm sure they'll charge me the $200.

grr, fuck dude..i was hoping maybe the ECU just needed to get used to things. *sighs* i had that MF'er dead on...guess it skipped time due to the tensioner or something. that was the t-belt change from hell! but we sure cant say we didt try lol. if you want me to come back down there in the next couple days..i can. or if you wanna take it to a shop, its your call.

Originally posted by 96eclipse2nr
grr, fuck dude..i was hoping maybe the ECU just needed to get used to things. *sighs* i had that MF'er dead on...guess it skipped time due to the tensioner or something. that was the t-belt change from hell! but we sure cant say we didt try lol. if you want me to come back down there in the next couple days..i can. or if you wanna take it to a shop, its your call.

I really don't feel right with you having to drive all the way the fuck back up here just to fuck with this whore of a car. How bad do you think it is, maybe a tooth off? Hopefully the shop won't charge me up the ass to re-align everything because I really need this car to be running properly. I have to skip classes tomorrow (again) so I can take it to the shop. Hopefully they can cut me some slack, because my car always seems to be up there.

Thanks again Byron.

hey it happens to the best of us, it is quite possible it jumped a tooth off but after installing it you need to turn the crank by hand 4 rotations to make sure everything is still aligned, i was so paranoid i turned mine 20 times just to make sure at every 4th revolution i was dead on, call it over kill but i dont like reduing stuff. sorry to hear about your luck as for labor goes hes gonna charge you what ever he would have charged you to begin with because it all has to be taken off and staart from scratch again to get it right, i mean minus the water pump and pulleys those he dont need to remove, if you really need to take it to the shop and hes gonna charge you 200 bucks and you feel comp with that thats fine but thats totally your call, just make sure they do it right. thats cool that you had someone drive 2 hrs to help you out, when i did mine i did it solo and that makes it twice as hard. good luck

hey koji, i got to mulling this all over just now. i mean..we both know it was set dead ass on. but you DID reuse your OEM tensioner with 130K miles. i mean..it did ok when we turned it by hand..but running it with an engine is diff. im almost wondering if your tensioner is not putting enough pressure on the belt and caused it to jump time. cuz what..we drive for like 15-20 min before we hit that stop light. thats the only thing i can think of honestly. and since its gonna be tore down again...its as good a time as any to get a new one.

Originally posted by 96eclipse2nr
hey koji, i got to mulling this all over just now. i mean..we both know it was set dead ass on. but you DID reuse your OEM tensioner with 130K miles. i mean..it did ok when we turned it by hand..but running it with an engine is diff. im almost wondering if your tensioner is not putting enough pressure on the belt and caused it to jump time. cuz what..we drive for like 15-20 min before we hit that stop light. thats the only thing i can think of honestly. and since its gonna be tore down again...its as good a time as any to get a new one.

Hmm, that could be a possibility... fuck, it's a huge possibility. Anyone know how much a new tensioner is from satan? If it's cheaper than $200 then I could go ahead and purchase it tomorrow morning because I was going to go to the shop at 7:30am. It should be a lot easier if you and I tear at it again. Although, I doubt you could come back down tomorrow because you'll most likely be busy. I'm not sure, hit me up on AIM if you can.

EDIT:
Shit, if we did, I'm going to just toss that timing belt cover. lol.

I'm willing to bet your tensioner isn't up to snuff. You said it started fine and then started messing up?

I think you guys found your problem. Sorry it was after the fact :(


Brian

Originally posted by ForceFed420a
I'm willing to bet your tensioner isn't up to snuff. You said it started fine and then started messing up? I think you guys found your problem. Sorry it was after the fact :( Brian

I think I'm going to just end up buying a new tensioner from the dealer and having the shop re-due everything for $200... I have a feeling I might be able to talk them down a bit to help me out; they're really nice guys. Now, it all just boils down to how much this tensioner is going to cost me. I've been reading around and I've found everything from $100-$200.

if you can find a dealer that will sell you just the tensioner it will cost you about 150 but most dealers are now selling a whole kit the tensioner and the housing for over 300 its crazy. but i think the original tensioner is the way to go havent messed with that new thing yet but the old one is easy

O'Reilly Auto Parts has a hydraulic tensioner for $98.99... I'll have it tomorrow, then it's off to the shop. Then I'm broke, fuck.

The car is finally running alright. I recently did a keydance and got code 25 for my Idle Air Control. About a month ago, I purchased a shitty replacement at Auto Zone. I took my old one and cleaned 'er up pretty good and slapped it back in; no code. I'm still getting code 11 for whatever reason... she's idling great and no backfire. My ECU is also faulty and randomly flashes, so it must be acting retarded.

I don't have the upper portion of my timing belt cover anymore due to it cracking... maybe that's what this sound is. From underneath the valve cover it seems, it's making a strange sound. For example, make an "o" with your mouth and blow; that's what it sounds like. Any ideas?

last weekend Dave (eclpsmoneypit95) and I did mine, and yeah, timing belt from hell.

We got the timing dead on the first time, but need to tear it down because the side mount won't go on all the way. We also broke (or I did) the timing belt cover trying to replace the water pump.

My car started up just great, my only problem is the belt is not tracking correctly, need to redo it this weekend (I'm getting a head start by removing the majority of the components friday so the rest on Saturday goes quicker). But when it first fired, that car sounded like it had a supercharger because the timing belt cover was rubbing on something.

Good luck on everything! You will get it right, and the car will be happy!

Ah, I found the problem. My mechanic forgot to plug up one of the vacuume lines. No more weird noises. :thumbsup

Hey, 95_ESi_Person, good luck on tearing her all down again... I'd start as early as possible if I were you.

yeah, I'm trying to avoid driving the car as much as I can. Starting on friday.