Belts For The 5th Time

New belts and Hill tensioners arrived in the mail today from Ricambi so tomorrow I begin the belt change on my '87 328 for the fifth time. I have decided to change the tensioners this time as well because I last changed them in 1995, four belts ago. The vehicle gets driven about 800 miles a year. This past summer my water pump bearings froze up so I had the pump rebuilt. It is fine now but while I had the pump off I discovered that one of the bearings in the water pump belt tensioner had a slight unevenness to it when turned by hand. They were the original bearings (30 years old) so I replaced them as well. Every time I changed the timing belt tensioners I inspected and listened to the tensioner bearings using a probe attached to a stethoscope. They always sounded identical and normal so I never changed them. But now I feel it is time.

 

Here is what the rear tensioner looks like after 22 years and about 16000 miles and 4 timing belts. The dual bearings seem fine but there is a small amount of rubber buildup on the periphery of the tensioner. There is no leakage of grease from the bearings and both turn perfectly smoothly.
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The old belt looks fine. If you want, I'll photograph it and post it. Belt only had about 4-5K miles on it. Belts were last changed in January 2013. Tensioners were 22 years old. The bearings were changed at Krause and England when I had the car serviced there and a main seal/clutch replaced. That's the only time any maintenance other than my own has been done to it except for a suspension recall back in the late 80's done at a Ferrari dealership in North Carolina.

New bearings are Hills and were manufactured in Japan. Old bearings installed in 1995 are SKF and were manufactured in Italy.