Re: Timing belt broke after 50k miles?!

"Steve B." <none@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:fdv024p2d067qv8o4lvsqsvp93jmip6eol@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The belt probably should have been replaced before that mileage but if
> the idler pulley failed it wouldn't have mattered... It would eat the
> new belt too.  The ridges can be cracked and the belt still be good.
> If any of the ridges come off or you see wear anywhere else on the
> belt it needs to go.  Usually a tensioner will make noise before it
> fails but not always.

Ah, so it's acceptible to have a belt where the longitudinal ridges have 
cracks at closely-spaced intervals all the way round the belt? OK. It
looked 
as if it was badly perished, but maybe it was still serviceable.

>>As a matter of interest, while the belt is off before it is replaced,
how
>>easy is it to tell whether the crank pulley is damaged? Would it wobble 
>>from
>>side to side on its shaft? I'm assuming that the ridged surface of the
>>pulley was undamaged because surely a garage would spot that as they
were
>>fitting the new belt, even if they didn't notice that the pulley was
loose
>>on its shaft.
>>
>
> It depends on how the crank pulley failed.  On most cars that I have
> dealt with the crank pulley is bolted very very well to the crank
> shaft  A failure of that pulley is pretty dang rare though the
> harmonic balance is behind it / part of it on some cars and those do
> fail more often  Do you know what piece of the pulley actually broke?

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the crank pulley after it had been 
removed. While it was in situ, most of it was hidden by the belt, in a
very 
narrow gap between the engine block and the body of the car. There wasn't 
enough space for me to get my arm in to feel down to the bottom of the 
engine to reach the crank pulley.

> On lots of cars you can just see / feel enough of the crank pulley
> from the top to loop the new belt around it so I don't know how easy
> it would have been to spot the problem on yours before it happened.

When the engine was running, when I first looked after I got the car home,

the pulley appeared to be wobbling side-to-side on its shaft instead of 
running true to the shaft as it does now.