Freelander 2 TD4 Timing Belt

Hi all,

Did the timing belt on my Freelander 2 with the 2.2 TD4 engine in the other day. Went pretty well to start with, removed the starter, locked in the timing, removed the old belt and fitted the new one (with new water pump, tensioner and idler). All seemed to be going well until I was hand cranking the engine to re-tension, after 10 revs of the engine I noticed the belt was tracking off the cam pulley and started to hang off the front of it by 3-4mm (attached a picture). I tried re-tensioning, making sure the tensioner was sitting right, made sure the idler is sitting right and made sure I had the right number of teeth on the down side of the timing belt. Tried again and still the same thing... I did notice that it was tracking off from the tensioner side so I'm pretty sure it is the tensioner.

I've bought a new tensioner to rule that out and I'm going to make sure I'm not being stupid and have the belt on the right way (if that's a thing with this belt) but if that doesn't work I'm thinking maybe the tensioner stud is bent? I can't think of anything else it could be.

I'm at a bit of a loss so if anyone has experienced this please let me know what the issue was.

Cheers!

Solved: Turns out you NEED to tension the tensioner anti-clockwise and NOT clockwise as I was doing. Tightening it clockwise puts the wrong strain on the tensioner and causes it to flex outwards, which in turn causes the belt to wonder of the cam pulley.

Glad I spotted it and spent time trying to fix it as this could have reduced the life of the belt considerably. Anyway thought I would update the post in case anyone else couldn't figure it out like me!

Lex Myster said:

Solved: Turns out you NEED to tension the tensioner anti-clockwise and NOT clockwise as I was doing. Tightening it clockwise puts the wrong strain on the tensioner and causes it to flex outwards, which in turn causes the belt to wonder of the cam pulley.

Glad I spotted it and spent time trying to fix it as this could have reduced the life of the belt considerably. Anyway thought I would update the post in case anyone else couldn't figure it out like me!

Click to expand...

Was there not an arrow on the face of the tensioner to tell you which way to turn it?

Stanleysteamer said:

Was there not an arrow on the face of the tensioner to tell you which way to turn it?

Click to expand...

If it did I didn't spot it. Only realised on my 4th read of the Haynes manual

Lex Myster said:

If it did I didn't spot it. Only realised on my 4th read of the Haynes manual

Click to expand...

I was only asking as I have just changed the belt on a Citroen C3 and it did have the arrow on it, and in my case the Haynes was useless a lot of the time. Just like yours had to be turned anti clockwise. Shame it cost you a new tensioner.
When I opened it up to remove the old belt, the tensioner was way off and we got the car with only 10k on it and no servicing at all beyond the very first one, so no one had been in there before me. So I was led to the conviction that it had probably been fitted wrong in the factory. No matter, fixed now and running a lot quieter!