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Hi All,

I am really hoping someone can provide some insight into a problem I am having. Unfortunately I am not a Honda owner but offered to do the timing belt on a 02 Honda Civic with the 1.7L for a close friend of mine who has a young family and very limited income. The car has 110,000 km's on it and was running fine until I touched it.....

I followed the DIY on this site which might I add is excellent, and everything went according to the DIY until we came to making sure the cam pulley and crank pulley were both at TDC. When the cam pulley was at TDC the crank pulley appeared to be off by about 1 tooth and I was very **** about making sure the cam pulley was lined up per the DIY. It was really difficult to see the arrow pointing towards the notch on the pulley so I ended up removing the belt with the cam pulley at TDC. I then moved the crank pulley about one tooth to line the arrow up with the notch perfectly. I verified this several times prior to putting the car back together. Once the new belt was on and the tensioner released we turned the engine over several times and rechecked (I cheated and used the starter to turn it over). Everything seemed fine. The car was reassembled and turned back over to my friend.

I drove the car around the block and everything seemed fine, he drove the car for 2 days and said it was running very smooth and was quite happy, then the problems began. He phoned me saying that the transmission was slipping and that he could not get it to shift or get it about 60 km/h but did manage to limp it home, he also indicated the check engine light came on. My friend is not very mechanically inclined. I used my code reader to attempt to read the codes and there were none stored. I took the car for a drive and the transmission seemed to be shifting fine but the car is lacking power, it is not slipping. The engine also seems to be noisier than it should be and idling slightly (very slightly) rough in my opinion. To me it seems like the timing is out but I can't figure out why it would run excellent for two days. To me around 2000 rpm it sounds like the valve's are floating. In an attempt to save him some money we did not change the timing belt tensioner.

Anyone have any ideas? If the belt was out a notch would it through a CEL? Is there anyway to confirm the timing without yanking the car right apart again?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated by both myself and friend.

 
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Well I think we have found the problem, I took the car apart again and it looks like the tensioner gave out, guess we should have changed it. The timing belt also appears to have jumped a couple of notches. The car was still running, and idling smooth so I am hoping that we are ok and that there is no internal engine damage. I'm guessing the lack of power was due to severely retarded timing. Have to wait until Tuesday next week for the new tensioner to come in.

 
Rep Power: 812

most likely everything will be fine with new tensioner. maybe something happened when you were putting the new belt on. the tensioners are very delicate.

 
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Thanks for posting this situation, I am going to be changing a TDC sensor on my Civic very soon. I was going to do the belt while I was in there and will plan on adding the tensioner to the list.

0 clearence engines do not like to have timing/belt problems your friend was very lucky that belt didn't continue to jump teeth as he drove home.

 
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I am getting ready to change my belt out and was thinking about getting by without changing everything else but after your post I've changed my mind about that. Your experience sounds like something I've done in the past trying to cut corners and I wonder if it's not me that's severly retarded instead of the timing lol. Thanks for the post as it will probably help many to just go ahead and bite the bullet to do the job right the first time.

 
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glad you got the problem fix.I had my timming belt replace by small shop, and the process doing so the mechanic had the car up on the hoist and a jack under right side of the engine supporting the engine, he lower the car abit to much causing the ac pulley to touch the inner suspension arm i think is, its being two weeks already and my car is squealing every now an than, am gonna try wd-40 but if that doesn't work am gonna bring it back in hopes that he holds accountable.