The Top DSM Community on the Web

For 1990-1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser, and Galant VR-4 Owners. Log in to remove most ads.

Please Support Kiggly Racing
Please Support ExtremePSI

1G Timing tensioner does not seem to sit centered with arm

This site may earn a commission from merchant
affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

No it works like a typical spring loaded belt tensioner. The hydraulic tensioner sets the pressure of the belt tension, the pulley determines the depth of the hydraulic tensioner on the arm


Long story short, I set belt tension too tight on the pulley and I was able to hear and see the timing arm hitting the hydraulic tensioner. That is how the arm becomes grooved like in his picture



Also to note, never leave the car in gear without the parking brake on. This can cause the damage seen in the arm. The engine is being forced by gravity to apply the force of the car against the rotation of the engine. Causing the arm and all of the timing components to take that force. Really hard on the entire engine

I always use my parking brakes. Even on my automatic daily driver. I'm weird about that LOL.

The pin moves freely so the tension should be good.
 
Also to note, never leave the car in gear without the parking brake on. This can cause the damage seen in the arm. The engine is being forced by gravity to apply the force of the car against the rotation of the engine. Causing the arm and all of the timing components to take that force. Really hard on the entire engine

Not saying this is wrong, but try that where the temperature swings wildly or gets extremely cold, and you won't be going anywhere. Had several parking brakes freeze on during winter/spring months, not fun to figure that out at subzero temps at 9pm. On a previous car I actually purchased a complete new e-brake cable and assembly, and thought I'd never have the problem again. Not the case unfortunately.

On any kind of incline, I absolutely agree. I just park on the flattest surface I can and use the trans to lock it in place, which should place little to no load on the engine at all.
 
Not saying this is wrong, but try that where the temperature swings wildly or gets extremely cold, and you won't be going anywhere. Had several parking brakes freeze on during winter/spring months, not fun to figure that out at subzero temps at 9pm. On a previous car I actually purchased a complete new e-brake cable and assembly, and thought I'd never have the problem again. Not the case unfortunately.

On any kind of incline, I absolutely agree. I just park on the flattest surface I can and use the trans to lock it in place, which should place little to no load on the engine at all.


Try accidentally pulling the e-brake after a 20min session at a track day haha.
 
Not saying this is wrong, but try that where the temperature swings wildly or gets extremely cold, and you won't be going anywhere. Had several parking brakes freeze on during winter/spring months, not fun to figure that out at subzero temps at 9pm. On a previous car I actually purchased a complete new e-brake cable and assembly, and thought I'd never have the problem again. Not the case unfortunately.

On any kind of incline, I absolutely agree. I just park on the flattest surface I can and use the trans to lock it in place, which should place little to no load on the engine at all.


Stop driving a 25+ year old car in subzero conditions. Lol

And yes I'm positive. The tensioner arm rests against the hydraulic tensioner and causes belt slack after engine cool down. The flywheel and crank pull the belt tight and raise the arm back up as part of the engine cranking over. Since the belt rotates clockwise, there is initial slack from pulling the oil pump, behind the crank pulley on the tensioner side of the crank, that's when the hydraulics pop the arm back up into place.

Why's all that necessary? So the belt isn't over strained and over tensioned during start up


The arm being bent is a sign the weight of the car has been put against the crank repeatedly.

I believe that this is specifically covered in the owners manual, that it says never leave the car in gear to prevent movement and always use parking brake.

A local guy bought a 94 3000gt sl brand new for his wife, it skipped timing several times usually after about 10k miles. It wasn't until the Mitsubishi claims rep saw pictures of how and where his wife parked on an extreme incline to the house that they realized the issue. That's the story that made me start seeing the gears turn
 
Last edited:
@jakk220
Thanks for the good sharp, large resolution photos! Well worth downloading and saving.
I wish some of the pics taken years ago could be taken over again with modern cameras.
If you happen to have a shot or 2 of the whole timing end of the engine put together, could you post it up please? I've only seen mine with the engine in the car.

Noticing a couple of your bolts look like they've been lying at the bottom of the ocean for a few years. So it's reminding me that you can buy most of these bolts OEM, still available, zinc plated class 10.9, from for example STM, but they don't show them all on their web site so you sometimes have to call or email.
Also a place called Bolt Depot sells some of these JIS type bolts, especially the JIS flange head bolts. Zinc plated, class 10.9. They also sell zinc plated class 12.9 socket head bolts for places where you might want those.

Too bad some of these parts are going manufacturer discontinued. My Recently bought tensioner MIT-MD164533 for 1g 6-bolt also has "2015" printed on it. Could be that was the last batch that will ever be made?
 
Last edited:
@jakk220
Thanks for the good sharp, large resolution photos! Well worth downloading and saving.
I wish some of the pics taken years ago could be taken over again with modern cameras.
If you happen to have a shot or 2 of the whole timing end of the engine put together, could you post it up please? I've only seen mine with the engine in the car.

Noticing a couple of your bolts look like they've been lying at the bottom of the ocean for a few years. So it's reminding me that you can buy most of these bolts OEM, still available, zinc plated class 10.9, from for example STM, but they don't show them all on their web site so you sometimes have to call or email.
Also a place called Bolt Depot sells some of these JIS type bolts, especially the JIS flange head bolts. Zinc plated, class 10.9. They also sell zinc plated class 12.9 socket head bolts for places where you might want those.

Too bad some of these parts are going manufacturer discontinued. My Recently bought tensioner MIT-MD164533 for 1g 6-bolt also has "2015" printed on it. Could be that was the last batch that will ever be made?

You must be logged in to view this image or video.


This is the best image that I have. And you have to love the Google Pixel 2 XL camera. The photos this phone takes are still amazing me to this day. Such as this photo. It looks a little off due to the resolution on the thumbnail. But if you click on the photo its shows it in full resolution. Its literally like a professional camera almost LOL

You must be logged in to view this image or video.


I am not sure on the tensioner itself, but I can tell you that the arm is impossible to find new now. I actually ended up welding the divot on a decent used one and grinding it down flat again.

And some of the important bolts like the tensioner pulley I was paranoid to use anything other than OEM and I was on a little bit of a time constraint so I just reused them. The threads were all cleaned up and looked good.
 
Last edited:
Yeah these photos are really good. I'm doing right click "save image as" and saving them to my computer, for future reference. I'm getting them as 1500 x 2000 pixels and about 500 to 800 KB.
Some of the cell phones from about the last 2 years, like yours and the recent Samsungs, do have cameras that do a great job. In one way they are actually better than a large format pro camera, and that is depth of field. More of it. A natural characteristic of small format cameras. So more depth of field means that objects both farther away and closer than the object you focused on, are also in pretty good focus.
I also appreciate that the forum here doesn't dumb-down photos as much as it used to, when you upload them. I think it does not dumb them down at all if the size you are uploading is less than about 1MB.

Man I am so glad I bought my "1G DSM bracket MD195094 Tensioner Arm/Idler Pulley Engine Bracket" about 8 months ago when they were in stock.
 
Support Vendors who Support the DSM Community
Boosted Fabrication ECM Tuning ExtremePSI Fuel Injector Clinic Innovation Products Jacks Transmissions JNZ Tuning Kiggly Racing Morrison Fabrications MyMitsubishiStore.com RixRacing RockAuto RTM Racing STM Tuned

Latest posts

Build Thread Updates

Vendor Updates

Latest Classifieds

Back
Top