I'm about a week behind reading my email, but I'm very curious what
Alfa Import Center's rationale was for advocating retaining the oil
feed to the tensioner.
-Joe
At 10:12 AM +0000 4/11/10, alfa-digest wrote:
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 22:43:12 -0700
From: Lalo Ruiz <[email protected]>
Subject: [alfa] Hydraulic Tensioner
As you all know, I'm in the middle of fixing bent valves from a slipped
mechanical tensioner on my Verde. I dug up the original hydraulic tensioner
that I removed years ago to convert to the mechanical tensioner. Needless to
say, it's going back on, no more fooling around with mechanical tensioners for
me.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that the PO had welded the oil feed hole on
the original mounting stud! I didn't even bother to check this when I removed
it long ago, didn't know at the time that that was the way to bypass the oil
feed. Anyway, I could not find anyone that had the hydraulic tensioner
bearing in stock. IAP, Centerline, Vick's, Spruell, DiFatta, no one. Most
said it would be months before they had any more.
In my search, I came across the Alfa Import Center,
http://www.alfaimportcenter.com/home.html . Never heard of these guys before.
They had a rebuilt hydraulic tensioner unit with new bearing in stock, a
rebuildable hydraulic tensioner in stock, rebuild kits for the tensioner in
stock, and a tensioner bearing in stock. Of course, I snagged the bearing!
Nice guys, gave me a bit of a lecture on why the original hydraulic tensioner
should be left alone (by not bypassing the oil feed), but were very helpful
nonetheless. Just wanted to give them a shout-out for helping where all the
other usual suppliers could not. Did I mention the bearing was at least $15
cheaper from them than everyone else's published prices?
- -Lalo
'88 Verde
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