Hey, thanks to everyone who spoke up in reply to my previous motor question (about which brands of timing belt are trustworthy).

I'm going to go ahead and put a Honda factory belt on this engine (94 Accord DX 2.2, 88K miles). If it fails early, I figure that would give me the leverage to muscle some goodwill repairs out of Honda North America. We have a lot of Honda products in our extended family and they presumably would want to keep us happy -- an aftermarket belt vendor would just tell me to get lost.

Making the parts list here for the rest of the job. I've got water pump (naturally), cam and crank and balance shaft seals, maybe an oil pump (gonna inspect while I'm inside, why not). The motor has had the seal retainer recall done already.

I'm not sure about how to handle the timing belt tensioner and balance shaft belt tensioner. Two new GMB tensioners cost about sixty bucks by Net order.

On the one hand, it's not a huge amount of money. And I would really like to have zero reasons to have to unbutton this Accord before the next belt service interval. It's been a beautifully reliable ride. And I've heard stories of belt tensioner bearings failing and driving people crazy with noise.

Also, I suppose that if the T/B tensioner really failed hard and froze up, it might cause the engine to skip timing or lose a belt tooth. Ouch! Balance belt tensioner would be a nonfatal failure.

But I have also heard of people racking up two or three belt changes on the stock tensioners with no problem. It's a real waste to just go and replace viable parts for no reason.

Haynes book doesn't reference anything about routine tensioner replacement. It talks *only* about inspect-and-replace-as-needed, and that only with respect to the balance belt.

My bud with the factory svc manual is out of town, so I can't use it to crosscheck Haynes. Rats.

I saw that timing belt tensioner springs are on the parts list (no comparable part for the balance shaft belt tensioner). Guess that some mechs will just inspect the bearings, and put in a new spring, and scoot.

Any clues people can throw my way would be great. My previous experience with Honda tensioners is with the wet chain tensioners used on their bikes, which isn't really very relevant to dry belt engines. I don't even know if the belt tensioners on the cars have any lubrication requirement!

Chris