Tensioner life short?
 

Hey all,

Just curious. How long do belt tensioners last for your cars? Judging by the sound, my wife's Max is about to be on its 4th one soon.

Mine's still the factory tensioner @ 162k miles/17yrs, of course when I install my belts I also carefully measure the deflection per FSM to help extend the life of the both the belts (currently 4yrs and counting w/ same belts) & tensioner bearings.

From my experience, the tensioner's life is not short. After 8 or 9 years in the Maxima game, I've never had to replace one.

I had to replace my tensioner at about 120k miles because it had too much play, then at about 132k the crankshaft pulley rubber gave out. When I replaced the crankshaft pulley I inspected the fairly new tensioner (I used an OEM Nissan replacement tensioner) and it already has a bump going round one revolution. Apparently the tensioner installed at the factory was better than the OEM replacement part.

My original tensioner went well past 300K, matter of fact I still have it, in the event the new one ever fails. The bearing is still tight and the pulley still good. The only reason I replaced it is because I did a water pump replacement. Figured since I was there I would replace it before it failed.

Only replaced mine for a noisy bearing with OEM and it is fine.

Junkyard parted for my second one but the original broke in half because of rust at about 220k. already put 13k on the "used" one.

Some bad mechanic manage to broke the threaded shaft in half. Welded and it lasted a year...And I 've replaced the bearing 2 times because of the noise.