Car in the shop for belts, including Hill tensioner brgs. Just got a call from mechanic. Was out for final test drive and heard a squeal. Then car started running on 4. Tensioner brg seized and melted the belt. More to follow.... PS: Yes, my mechanic knows damn well what he is doing.
Which bank? I've seen a few installation errors of tensioner bearings on the left bank which can make them look seized - they start squealing within about 20 mins of running.
Here's a question...was it just the bearings that were replaced or the tensioners themselves? Possible the problematic tensioner seized and caused the issue?
Just throwing this out there, but HE has a counterfeit warning on their website. Were the bearings procured directly from HE? “We have recently been made aware of several inferior copies of our tensioner bearings and would strongly recommend researching the disastrous consequences of using bearings of unknown origin (Would you use a timing belt with no markings on it?) .Our PT series bearings that we manufacture are all security coded and batch numbered to help against the problem of counterfeit bearings.”
Improper tension will trash the bearings, too. As mentioned above, Ricambi and HE direct are the reliable way to get original HE bearings.
Jim, this is terrible news. Even the best parts manufacturers can occasionally have an unforeseen failure. I am sure your tech will get this mess straightened out, he is the best.
That's very unfortunate. It would be interesting to inspect the seized bearing. Not many things can cause a bearing like that to seize that quickly, especially if it spun nice going in, possibly foreign material left inside the bearing from manufacturing?