Well thought I would do the cam belt today,what a ballache that turned out to be,should have taken an hour tops,my set up doesn't use the normal 1.8t tensioner as it was changed for a 16v tensioner because the motor was originaly going in a mk1,i had a new 16v tensioner knocking about so I decided to save a few quid and use that along with a new contitech belt,so off came the old belt and tensioner and on with the new parts, marks all lined up I tightened the tensioner bolt and I felt the bolt go loose
,i wound it back out and out with it came bits of alu thread,so why did this happen?, who ever did the tensioner conversion had used a bolt that was to short so was only into the thread by about a 1/4"
I am really surprised it didn't come out and wreck my engine,so cleared the hole and weighed up my options, I next measured the depth of the hole and thank god 3/4" deep so I knew I had about 1/2" of good thread left,so out came an m10 tap and very carefully wound it in praying it would land square onto the good remaining threads, bingo it went in and picked up perfect, time to stop panicking
.So this time I used a piece of m10 threaded bar and wound it in right to the back of the hole and topped it of with a new washer and nyloc nut,put it all back together and fired her up ,so that's another job to cross off the list ha.I was sweating out a little at one point,thought I might have had to buy the correct tensioner for a minuite
