Combining my replies here...
Originally Posted by westcoaststyle
My first impression is that the timing belt isn't on correctly...
Why would you buy a timing belt off of ebay? :thinking:
Just seemed like a decent deal, half of what it would have cost to order an OEM belt from acuraautomotiveparts.org. The seller advertised a new OEM belt, sealed, and that's what showed up, with all labels matching perfectly.
If this belt is a fake, it's an incredibly artful one. And I don't think a rebagged used belt could be made to look completely new.
What none of those comments rule out is that the new belt could be genuine OEM, but defective. I thought Honda had pretty tight quality control on any goods sold under their label, but mistakes still do happen.
Originally Posted by qtiger
See if you can find someone local with an old (or new) belt to compare your old belt to.
I can't think of a good reason why a new belt would be longer on a b18c1. If you had a b16a and picked up a b18 belt then yeah, might be a smidge longer (anyone confirm?).
Did you bed the belt on the pulleys beforehand by rotating the crank counterclockwise 4-6 times?
I will probably just go ahead and bite the bullet and buy a third belt directly from the local stealership. If it comes to that, I will compare lengths of #1, #2 and #3 and report.
I did not bed the belt with four to six rotations -- probably did two or three. I installed by looping it around the pulleys and tensioner, with the tensioner bolt backed off, performed 2 or 3 crank turns CCW, back to TDC1 on crank, reconfirmed TDC1 on both cams, turned crank to produce three teeth CCW on the exhaust cam, tightened up the tensioner bolt.
Easy enough to re-bed it with more rotations. I will try that before I actually pull out the belt.