Thought I'd do the belt on my connect today as a couple of jobs were canceled for this afternoon, so I pulled it in the garage and began to source a belt kit etc then go about stripping it down. Everything went well and took a lot less time than the autodata lol. So everything back together all going really well and started first turn of the key superb so I thought. Anyway ticked over for about two minutes then all of a sudden made a horrible noise and ground to a halt. The worst thing possible had happened something wrong in the belt cover!! I stripped it down and the belt was shredded and ground away the cover but tensioner looked intact. I couldn't for the life of me understand why this had happened so checked a couple of forums and there was a couple suggesting a misshapen new tensioner so checking it against a square the tensioner the tapers slightly towards the cover only 1-2 mm but noticeable. It was a gates kit and iam waiting to hear back from my supplier tomorrow who are contacting gates. This slight taper would make perfect sense..
Has this ever happened to anyone else?

 

This is the very reason i only use Ford belt kits.Worth that little extra.

 

Problem is most of the time you get a ford belt it's actually a gates belt in the box lol

 

its only for the pump iirc so at least your valves will be alright.

Gates are top quality kits,

keep us updated

 

Its all sorted now but its not just fro the pump. the pump is meshed with the crankshaft so piston to valve contact happens which it did and bent 2 valves 1 inlet and 1 exhaust.
The problem was down to the tensioning of the belt infact it was put down to human error. This was done to the autodata timing belt book which isnt the best for its description or illustrations and apperared to be done correctly, however gates have had litterally thousands of these coming back as faults they decided to purchase engines at there factory and had there engineers fit timing belts to these engines in different untill they found out that in a certain position the belt bounces and chucks itself off. After you speak to gates technical department theyre quite happy to tell you exactly whats happened and why and even email you with information including perfect pictures of the exact possition of the tensioner. I dont honestly know why they dont put an songle a4 sheet of paper within the box of the belt kit with the diagrams and picture on especially when they know it could easilly happen

 

Thanks for the info, how old is the timing belt book, It would be interesting to compare the procedures on our computer at work and the old book and old autodata disc

Glad you've got it sorted anyway

 

It's a 2006 belt book mate it's the newest belt book I've got lol. Don't suppose you've got copy of autodata on cd have you that I can get a copy of? Cheers, Darren.

 

I rebuilt a 1.8 tdci engine and used a gates belt. I followed the ford tis data and all is good. I think Autodata timing belt books are a bit vague.