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oh dear oh dear
Oh dear oh dear no wonder my crankshaft pulley was 'wobbling' so much ...it was wobbling so much the tensioner was bouncing about like crazy and making a terrible noise... looks like some one tried to bodge it with a welder ....
I suspect the finger points at the garage I bought it from who said they'd changed all the belts and pulleys ....hmmm maybe not.
Hope fully the new cheapo one from transit parts (not the best supplier...but cheap) will stop some of the 'wobbling'
new pulley going on ... so simple
I don't really understand why they bodged it like that ... it must of taken longer to get the welder out than it took to replace the Pulley (once the wheel was off)... and yes its OK to reuse the bolts at least twice...they're done up FT and with loctite 243.
any way the tensioner no longer looks like its trying to jump out the engine bay..
I had to replace the Delphi tensioner its self yesterday...the bush at the top of the Spring assembly had disintegrated ...I couldn't find a replacement bush ..so replaced it with another Delphi unit.
The rest of the unit was in good shape.
If it goes again I'll make a nylon or PU bush to replace the rubber original bush....is this common failure ??.
Changed the water pump belt (it was badly cracked) and tensioner as well as a quick oil/filter change whilst I had the car off the road for a day.
Hard plastic won't last. Rubber bearings are used all over cars because they flex and don't have a sliding surface.
With your plastic inserts there is a sliding joint, that is a wear point. In a dirty environment it will wear even faster.
Rubber joints in auto suspension systems were a great invention. I remember cars that had metal joints
that had to be greased. They never lasted the life of the car the way that rubber joints usually do.
The joint in your tensioner failed, sometimes they do, but a rubber bearing is far better in that application.
Hard plastic won't last. Rubber bearings are used all over cars because they flex and don't have a sliding surface.
With your plastic inserts there is a sliding joint, that is a wear point. In a dirty environment it will wear even faster.
Rubber joints in auto suspension systems were a great invention. I remember cars that had metal joints
that had to be greased. They never lasted the life of the car the way that rubber joints usually do.
The joint in your tensioner failed, sometimes they do, but a rubber bearing is far better in that application.
Very Very True
That's why I Used PU in the end (it is one of the harder grade PU but still soft enough to pass the fingernail test (yes I know not scientific)) I had a lot of the hard white Nylon but came to the same conclusion as you ( i suspect you see the machining marks this is done because the PU is 'frozen' in dry Ice before machining . A technique we and many others use to modify industrial rubber and PU machine bushes and mountings .. and you have to be very quick ...only really enough time to use a parting bit for shaping ...no time for nice finish.
Also the Aluminium Core of the bush (the original was also Aluminium ) is tapered from both ends now to help keep it centred in the PU.
The old unit was 'operating' metal on metal as the bushes had failed so I suspect the PU will be better than that at least ....plus it is also used in automotive/machine bushes worldwide.
I'm going to fit the solid Transit Bottom pulley (got one from a local scrappy for £5) tomorrow so I 'll try the tensioner spring assembly as well...if it fails I'll update to make sure no one else tries this.
I also have a alternator clutch from a toyota to try as well.