Chunky tyres
New Member
I am in Plymouth and hope to find this useful to help me solve a recurring problem with my elderly Dads TD4.
Sorry but this is a long story!
It starts when when 2002 TD4 Freelander suffered crankshaft pully damper failure. An aftermarket pulley was fitted with a lot of blood sweat and tears removing the old one, also a new auxiliary belt as a precaution.
All seemed good at the but a couple of weeks later the belt shredded itself and I could only assume that I damaged it putting it as I found out later that I put over the wrong pulley last and possibly causing stress on the belt however as an extra precaution decided to replace the tensioner and idler just in case, a bit of a nightmare job as it is inboard.
Anyway I got another belt learnt the new much easier installation method found on this forum, easypeasy!
OMG a few hundred miles later no power steering! The belt was slack and discovered the brand new tensioner spring had failed. Oh well ! **it happens so fitted another one from a different supplier INA.
Guess what ! probably just over 300 miles that one failed.
On further inspection of the tensioner I find that the date stamps and production marks on the pressing are exactly the same, these were made in the same place at the same time and sold under different badges.
I made enquiries with the motor factors but they had no previous record of failures and I therefore could only assume that this was possibly a bad batch with poor heat treatment of the spring.
Off I go again, this time ordered a 'Gates' version and guess what same markings but the date stamp was 2 years earlier, so fitted that one.
Yep! you guessed it that one has just failed but manged to get over 1K mileage this time.
As an engineer I appreciate the importance of alignment etc to avoid premature failure but everything looks fine no play that I can see, also on this model the tensioner is inboard with the arm coming through the casing so no lateral play on the tensioner body.
My question is this, suppose under certain conditions there was high frequency chattering of the tensioner could the spring fail prematurely. I do remember seeing this once but only a few seconds after the new belt but assumed it was because it was bedding in. I'm thinking that may be the crank pulley fitted right at the start of this saga could be slightly eccentric. I am going o clock it to make sure its in spec.
Oh it had a new alternator in between this so can't be the freewheel pulley.
Please help ! any ideas or anyone else experienced similar ??
Sorry but this is a long story!
It starts when when 2002 TD4 Freelander suffered crankshaft pully damper failure. An aftermarket pulley was fitted with a lot of blood sweat and tears removing the old one, also a new auxiliary belt as a precaution.
All seemed good at the but a couple of weeks later the belt shredded itself and I could only assume that I damaged it putting it as I found out later that I put over the wrong pulley last and possibly causing stress on the belt however as an extra precaution decided to replace the tensioner and idler just in case, a bit of a nightmare job as it is inboard.
Anyway I got another belt learnt the new much easier installation method found on this forum, easypeasy!
OMG a few hundred miles later no power steering! The belt was slack and discovered the brand new tensioner spring had failed. Oh well ! **it happens so fitted another one from a different supplier INA.
Guess what ! probably just over 300 miles that one failed.
On further inspection of the tensioner I find that the date stamps and production marks on the pressing are exactly the same, these were made in the same place at the same time and sold under different badges.
I made enquiries with the motor factors but they had no previous record of failures and I therefore could only assume that this was possibly a bad batch with poor heat treatment of the spring.
Off I go again, this time ordered a 'Gates' version and guess what same markings but the date stamp was 2 years earlier, so fitted that one.
Yep! you guessed it that one has just failed but manged to get over 1K mileage this time.
As an engineer I appreciate the importance of alignment etc to avoid premature failure but everything looks fine no play that I can see, also on this model the tensioner is inboard with the arm coming through the casing so no lateral play on the tensioner body.
My question is this, suppose under certain conditions there was high frequency chattering of the tensioner could the spring fail prematurely. I do remember seeing this once but only a few seconds after the new belt but assumed it was because it was bedding in. I'm thinking that may be the crank pulley fitted right at the start of this saga could be slightly eccentric. I am going o clock it to make sure its in spec.
Oh it had a new alternator in between this so can't be the freewheel pulley.
Please help ! any ideas or anyone else experienced similar ??
