Miata timing belt - is it off by a tooth?

Is it possible that you may have bought a bad belt?

Woody said:

Is it possible that you may have bought a bad belt?

Could be - the set came with the car when I bought it and was Continental brand, so I'd hope it was decent.

EDIT:  I guess if the belt just needs to stretch a bit, it could have been fighting the tensioner spring, too. 

Now that it looks right, it is getting tempting to just toss everything together and hope all goes well.

Everything looks right there, I think you're good. 

Shout out to Curtis who really dug in to get you good info. 

I don't know if you had a NA or NB and if you have a timing wheel or not (bolts behind the crank pulley), but if you do, don't put it on backwards or it won't start, and you'll be saying "What the...!"

Cheers man!

Thank all of you!  I’ll try to get it together this weekend and see what happens.  Need to do one or two other things before I drop it off the stands, but nothing that should take too long.

The belts don't stretch.

It's good. Stop worrying :)

Well?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ETN9eNOA6vw

In reply to OldGray320i :

  I’m stalled out again -  sliced a finger open working on it on Saturday, and am trying to let it heal to the point it doesn’t need a bandaid (it’s just shallow enough a butterfly bandage shouldn’t be needed) to keep it from starting to bleed again.  I’ve got the timing covers on, along with the cam cover, and pulleys, then messed my finger up when I couldn’t get a spring clamp fitted properly on a coolant line.

Edit: I will definitely update this thread once there is a result, positive or negative.

eastsideTim said:

In reply to OldGray320i :

  I’m stalled out again -  sliced a finger open working on it on Saturday, and am trying to let it heal to the point it doesn’t need a bandaid (it’s just shallow enough a butterfly bandage shouldn’t be needed) to keep it from starting to bleed again.  I’ve got the timing covers on, along with the cam cover, and pulleys, then messed my finger up when I couldn’t get a spring clamp fitted properly on a coolant line.

 

Edit: I will definitely update this thread once there is a result, positive or negative.

Ah, well, my hands and arms looked like I stuck them in a meat grinder when I was done, so heal well my friend!

Finger hasn't fully healed, but I'm in good enough shape to just keep a bandaid over it, and start working on the car again.  The injury came about when I was trying to remove the new hose from teh thermostat housing, because the original spring clamps were too small to fit in place anymore, guess the hose is just a tad thicker than the original, and the clamps won't fit over both the hose and the barb at the same time.  I got the hose loose today, and then tried with a slightly larger spring clamp I had in my parts stash.  Still too small - and one of the tines broke off it when I tried to remove it from the hose, so I can't remove it from the hose.  And the hose is stuck again.   All I can do at this point is laugh so I don't scream.

Heading back oot to the garage to stare at it for a while and see if I can figure something out.

Eventually managed to pull the hose off the car again.  With a couple of needlenose pliers, and some help from my wife, the broken spring clamp is removed.  Dug through the garage looking for anything else appropriately-sized, but my stash of old stainless Mercedes worm clamps appears to be depleted.  I did find some fuel injection hose clamps, and used them.  One is a little close to a belt, but I think I positioned it so they won't come in contact.  I am a little concerned with all the abuse the new hose has been through that it could be compromised.  I'll hold onto the old one as a backup, just in case.

Moving on to other reassembly...

Back together after way too long.  Battery is on a float charger.  I'll try to start it up tomorrow when the battery is charged up, and it's dry outside.

Sweet!  I found that vice grip pliers of the appropriate nose and size work best, you can be left a little tight on some hoses (as you've found out).

This sounds like one of "those" projects...

Woo hoo!!  Here's hoping it's all good to go!

I think I berkeleyed up.  It's clattering like a diesel.  Revs just fine.  I ran it for a couple minutes thinking maybe some oil passages need to get filled up.  Oil light isn't coming on, but that makes sense since thet oil is cold.  I think it is a top end noise.  Will try to upload a video to youtube in a bit, if it doesn't go away.  I need to start the car and move it again so I can pull the 5 into the garage to diagnosis it's brakes.

What year is this car? None of them have oil lights, but 1990-95 have a real oil pressure gauge and 1996-97 have a "gauge" that is triggered by a 7 psi switch. 
 

If it's been a long time since it ran, you may have to take it for a run to get all the HLAs filled up. It can take 15 minutes. Short runs (in and out of the garage) exacerbate the problem.  I can't think of a way that you could screw up a timing belt and cause a top end noise. It's a non-interference engine. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

At the same time I was doing this, I pulled and cleaned the HLAs, and replaced the valve stem seals, so I was into the engine a bit farther than just doing the belt/water pump and cam/crank seals.  I'll see about taking it for a spin.  It's not like I have much to lose at this point.  Either they'll pump up and be alright, or the engine is already toast.

If you had them out, they're going to be noisy. Take it out and run it. You haven't hurt it. 

One of my cars took almost a week to pump up one of the HLAs after some work. The engine never showed any signs of distress because of it over the next couple of decades.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Thank you.  After a 15 minute drive, the engine is considerably quieter.  I'll try to post before/after videos tonight, as it still seems a bit louder than I remember before doing all the work, but I can't say for sure.  One positive is the new valve stem seals seem to have cured most or all of my oil burning problem.  Really hoping everything works out, as I do not have time right now to do an engine swap - too many other projects were neglected to get this done.

Miata engines are literally the best engines to tinker with. They're so tough and really hard to screw up - even when you do they usually forgive you. It gets easier the 2nd (and 3rd, and 4th, and...) time you do it. Yesterday I did the head gasket, timing belt, put back on the intake, swapped the trans back to the 5 speed from the 6 speed, and put back on the supercharger in roughly the same time it took me to do the first timing belt on this car. Mind you, exocets make doing the transmission (and most things) much easier, but my first timing belt I checked and then triple checked and still wasn't sure.

A good experiment to do if you're worried about being off by a tooth is getting a paint pen and marking your current marks on the belt and cogs. Move it off by a tooth and then you'll see just how wrong it'll look when it's off by a tooth, it's fairly obvious. 

Glad you got it back together!

Sorry about the vertical videos, didn't realize my phone was doing that:

Shortly after startup:

After a 15 minute drive:

Much improved, but still seems a bit loud to me.  Anyone else have thoughts on that?  Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive.

It sounds pretty good to me!

(The second one)

Agreed, nothing came across in that second video that sounded sketchy. These things don't have plastic aesthetic panels with big pads of sound insulation on them (hello LS3) to hide the normal sounds of lifters.