Joe:
I'm very sorry to hear that your belt slipped. We'll all keep our
collective fingers crossed for you.
Would you do us all a favor? When you remove the belt, go over it very
carefully with a magnifying glass. Look at every tooth and try to determine
why it slipped. Look for scuff marks, wear marks, or deformed teeth. Also,
run it across your fingers and see if it hangs the same no matter where
along its length you support it. If, at some point, it seems to hang with a
crease, that could indicate broken glass inside. I don't buy that the belt
slipped because of its age. That's not how timing belts fail. They break.
So I think that something else likely caused the problem. It could be
something like foreign matter getting between the belt and the sprockets,
oil contamination from a bad seal, water contamination from a coolant leak
or the road, etc. But I'm willing to bet something other than age caused
your problem. It would be good for all of us V6 owners to understand. And
if you find some other cause, then we can feel safer about using the
original tensioner. At this point, its infallibility IS in question.
Hang in there. We'll all be thinking about you.
Rich Wagner
Montrose, CO, USA
'82 GTV6
--
to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
