V6 tensioner fans no matter what the type hear ye, hear ye. The 12v oil fed or mechanical types and 24v type cylinder/piston type they all work and work well when installed correctly and maintained. Things like failing bearings, broken springs, binding pivot points and oil leaks are all problems related in part to the fact that even with timing belt covers in place these parts take a beating from the weather elements that get thrown at tensioner areas. There are as many failures from improper installation as there are from improper maintenance. I have been using new style mechanical tensioner with thermal clutch since 1993 and never had a failure but I have changed a bunch on other folks engines where the outer thermal clutch springs have been broken. Now why is that? My theory is improper installation and even the Alfa factory bulletin sets up a mech to do it wrong by snapping tensioner body over center and overtensioning outer thermal clutch spring. I find binding pivot point of tensioner pulley eccentric arm on all types of tensioner set ups is a cause of under tensioned belts even if all springs in good shape. Bottom line on an Alfa V6 engine you can't just throw a new timing belt at it and drive it for 50k or 5 years without rechecking belt tension and tensioner condition periodically. It just wasn't made that way I am sorry to say. It wasn't made a drive to failure design. I stay away from fixed type tensioner such as the Zat tensioner on a daily driver. I tried them but belt was either to tight or to loose. I expect it is best suited to use on a racing engine and checked before each race. I do have two engines that run original factory oil fed tensioners, too but not really driving/running those engines. One a spare engine and other is in my "concours" 164L. Alfisto Steve In a message dated 2/9/2010 9:07:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
Re: [alfa] GTV-6 engine problem -- to be removed from alfa, see http://www.digest.net/bin/digest-subs.cgi or email "unsubscribe alfa" to [email protected]
