langer

iTrader: (1)

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?

andy130

iTrader: (2)

the very same thing happend me, had one very bad bent valve but van was driving when it snaped, i fitted new belt an never looked back, gates kit aswel

langer

iTrader: (1)

Did you contact gates about this? Also did you replace the tensioner again?

langer

iTrader: (1)

New update!!
My supplier contacted the belt manufactuer being gates yesterday and apparently they've had loads and loads of these fail on the connects so they bought engines in to test themselves and found a massive fittment fault. Turns out that after fitment and the engine has been turned six times there is a certain position the automatic tensioner must sit at which is not illustrated properly in the autodata 2006 timing belt book in which I used when fitting the kit, hence this is the reason for the failure. I feel robbed in a way as gates have all this information to hand as they've emailed it to my supplier with illustrations etc of the correct position but they do not even put a note or anything in with the kits and fitting the kits to the word of the autodata appears not to be correct.

Karl 3dr

iTrader: (9)

So what are they going to do about it?

langer

iTrader: (1)

In a word nothing they refuse to acknowledge it's any fault of theirs at all they say it's down to faulty fitment and not their fault they only investigated the problem as there was that many of the kits coming back as to why they don't put this find out within their kits they couldn't answer. Unless this find has been passed on to auto data and they have rectified it in the newer timing belt book illustrations iam unsure of. Really it could be down to autodata in the case of the book I have now which is an 06 book and the connect is an 06. I really should now be taking it to auto data but as iam needing the van I've stripped the head off it and it has 2 bent valves.so going to just have to sort it myself
for now