That point of slackness looks like very bad juju to me.

Even if it isn't causing the rattle, I'd be concerned that that point would eventually cause failure.

 

i think its the fact that the new belt is longer...
the actual part # on the belt itself matches the old and the ebay one?

yea bad idea with the timing belt on ebay thing...
i think paying double (retail price) would have been worth the trouble compared to what you are going thru now.
also, why do you think it was 1/2 price?
because you get what you pay for.

you should use the torque wrench on all bolts pertaining to the timing assembly. if that means grinding a $2 socket down to fit, than thats what you have to do.

i actually had a balancer shaft alignment sealing bolt "fall" out of the back of my block 3 days ago, so i fashioned a rubber plug for the hole to stop the oil from squirting out until my local dealer ordered the part. just put it on and the new ****er didnt fit right, so i had to re-thread the hole anyway. (shows how much the dealer knows)

either way i feel for ya, i havent tasted VTEC in 3 days and im starting to go nuts.

GET ANOTHER BELT

~boom

 

OK, here is a really serious lesson for all readers.

I was about to reply, irritably, "Yes, dumbass, of COURSE it's the same number. I've checked it REPEATEDLY."

But I caught myself and went back to look one more time, just in the infinitesmally tiny case that I was wrong.

Guess what? I was wrong.

Get this: original belt reads 126RU26, 14400-P72-004, UNITTA Made in Japan.

The replacement belt reads 126RU26, 14400-P72-014, UNITTA Made in Japan.

One digit off. This is a B18C1 GSR engine. But the belt I put in is for a B18C5 -- it's a frickin' TYPE R BELT.

So, it's a genuine part all right, I didn't get a clone or a fake, it's just that the guy that listed it on ebay as a GSR belt was wrong.

And when I looked at the numbers before installing the new belt, I was wrong too. My brain must have seen what it wanted to see (because I absolutely did check those numbers against each other).

I looked at 'em again when trouble cropped up, and I must have just looked at the identical 126RU26 and not at the fine print.

Who's the dumbass here? Not ludeboom.

The ebay seller's a dumbass for not verifying what he was selling. I'm an equally big dumbass for not doing a digit to digit write-down comparison (especially after realizing that the length of the belt was a bit different).

And Honda/Acura corporate are dumbasses for using this part coding. I used to supervise computerized inventory control in my day job. If someone working for me had generated an off-by-one-digit stock number for a visually similar but functionally different part, I would have kicked their asses across the room. Then I would have gone back and carefully explained that it is superbad juju to assign codes in that way. Too much risk of casual confusion.

If the parts look similar, the codes have to look different. Mixups are inevitable otherwise. Honda don't seem to have figured that out. D'oh!

Anyway, I went back and rechecked, and I have escaped this little lesson without any bent valves, praise the deity of your choice. Still have 205 to 210 psi on all four cylinders.

Now I've got to go pick up a proper GSR belt. Anyone need a spare ITR belt?

 

a single digit in the end of the code is a small revision. hence the type-r most likely has slightly different cam gears over the gsr.

yea mine are all between 210-220
seems high


~boom

 

I was under the impression that compression check alone may not tell you that you don't have bent valves. Leakdown is supposed to be the better test of leaky valves. My compression is 239-240 psi so I think we are all about right. Is the ITR bnelt keeping the cam gears in time?

 

Yes. TDC1 on the crank and the cams stays lined up even after the car has been started. And the car does start and run through the rev range, it's just that it makes this unpleasant rattling sound -- presumably from the looseness of the belt.

If I had some way to dial in extra tension to compensate, the belt would probably be OK. The tensioning procedure given in the manual just doesn't put in enough tension for this slightly longer belt.

I have heard of a few cases where inexperienced wrenches don't think the belt looks tight enough with the normal procedure, and they push on the tensioner with a thumb to add more tension. For the correct belt, that usually makes it *too* tight, and they end up with belt whine. But this isn't the correct belt -- and so that trick might work just fine in this case. It does mean having to take off the crank pulley and the lower cover.

The other thought was that I should do the tensioning procedure, but reach down with a bent hanger and pull on the tensioner harder than the spring normally pulls. Don't know if that hack actually works. But it could potentially add more tension without going back into the lower belt system.

 

does your GSR have a hydraulic auto-tensioner like the h22a/1/4 series?

~boom

 

It's spring-loaded on the b series.

 

Yep, and a good thing, too!

If this engine had an autotensioner, it probably would have been impossible to do anything to remediate the longer belt.

Since it has a spring, I might have come up with a hack here to make it work. I repeated the tensioning procedure, but first, I had a helper thread a heavy coat hanger tip down into the lower timing belt cover, to hook the spring.

I had them pull up pretty forcefully, to make the spring seem to exert several times more force than normal on the arm of the belt tensioner. Then, while they held it, I locked the tensioner bolt down.

Spun the engine through a couple of turns using the pulley bolt, and it keeps time. The loose flappy condition of the belt is no longer visible. It seems to vary between tight and very tight.

Just started and ran the car. At low revs it sounds perfect. The distributor rattle is completely gone. I will post updates when I can run the car harder. Right now, I'm missing one of the valve cover nut gaskets. I forgot to take them all off before the last time I flipped the cover back, and I lost one unfindably down the back of the engine compartment -- grrrrrrrrrr, hate it when that happens. So I don't want to run up the oil pressure with the cover only partly held down.

Anyway, this confusion of the GSR belt with the Type-R belt seems to be pretty common. I pulled up ebay and searched for GSR belts. Didn't find anything in the active acutions. Searched completed auctions, and there were a couple of listings for "factory GSR timing belt" or similar wording.

One of those ads for a "GSR belt" had a photo of the belt in its bag with the label, and the label says 14400-P72-014. Wait a minute, that's the Type R belt!

Also, if you go to acuraautomotiveparts.org, and use their car-specific search to find a GSR belt for any GSR 96-01, it returns SKU #8676, BELT (126RU26).

Try looking up the belt for a 97-01 Type R with the car-specific search, and it comes back with the same thing, SKU #8676, BELT (126RU26).

If you plug in the factory part code 14400-P72-014 for the Type R belt, yet again, you will get the same SKU #8676, BELT (126RU26).

But if you put in the slightly different factory part code for the GSR belt (14400-P72-004), it returns SKU #8675! They are different parts! The 126RU26 shows up the same on both belts -- horribly bad information design by Honda employees.

That one inconsistency has just cost me over a month of sweating and scratching my head and disassembling the car over and over again.

 

that parts website isnt accurate guy, at no point is honda at fault here, the honda part numbers were different. that belt part # from the SKU is probably not a genuine honda belt. if it is genuine than again its the wholesalers fault or whoever put in the SKU code.

and ebay is ebay

~boom