On the road the other night, luckily on a not-so-busy throughway with many pullouts, the sooby decided to die. Dash lights galore, no power, the works. I pulled over to a safe spot, got out, opened the hood and checked the engine. I looked down inside and noticed many chunks of frayed rubber coming from the timing belt cover. D'oh!

 

I got a tow to the nearest shop ... Pep Boys(ugh). This was after hours, so I just had to leave it there and use the drop key service. Anyhoo, the next day they called me with the estimate. $945 for T-belt, water pump, T-stat, accessory belts, timing belt tensioner and various other parts and services needed for the job. Oh well, over the barrel at this point, so I had them do it.

 

Thing is, the T-belt was replaced about 14 months ago when I was having cam and crank seals done. The Pep Boy said, by his estimate, whoever did the T-belt the last time over torqued the tensioner bolt, which eventually broke causing the belt to get off track and become shredded (it never actually broke, only shredded). Anyone ever hear of that? If that were the case, would it have taken 14 months for something to have happened? If that can be proved, could there be any restitution attained from the mechanic whose gorilla grip over torqued my bolt? What else could cause a shredded, not broken T-belt?

 

So glad the 2.2L is noninterference.

Lucky you. If you had the 2.5L, or even a newer 2.2L engine, you'd be looking at a minimum of $3,000 for valve replacement. The mechanic is guessing that the previous guy overtorqued the tensioner bolt, although it may an on target guess. The loss of the tensioner could easily cause your timing belt to mistrack and shread.

Eighteen months is a long time. The tensioner mounting bolt could have been defective, it happens. Can you prove to the original mechanic that no one else, including you, has worked on the engine?

I wanna know htf over overtorquing the tensioner bolt can do that? if it was over tightned it would strip it out of the block? otawise it would hold , correct me if im wrong but thats just my thoughts.