My '92 Loyale died a few weeks ago in some bitterly cold weather. It had all the symptoms of a timing belt failure, but when I checked, both belts were still there. I looked at the spark timing next, and it was all over the place! I couldn't figure it out.

 

Anyways, to make a long story short, I took the belt covers off, and found the problem. When the previous owner had the timing belts changed, whoever did the work only used 1 bolt on the drivers' side tensioner instead of 2. The second bolt wasn't there at all. The tensioner was loose, and the drivers' side belt had zero tension. I pulled a bolt off a parts car I have, put it in, and now it's working fine.

 

Grr! At least it gave me an excuse to take the timing belt covers off.

just like the white dl rust free wagon i got , the owner said bent valves , the timing was not set 180 off

i had seen a distributor jump a tooth because the last person to work on the car overtorqued and stripped the cam retainer bolts and the cam walked out enough to shear a tooth and set the disty off