Ockham's Razor & My Timing Chain ...
 

I dodged a bullet.

Not really though.

In reality, a bullet was never even shot my way.

I’ve been totally stressing and a quite depressed over the last few months feeling pretty certain that my TC tensioner and possibly my TC guides were failing... classic TC clatter.

I talked to a number of folks, including my Nissan mechanic and watched and listened to all of the Youtube stuff I could find. I was for sure … classic TC clatter.

But then again, something in the back of my brain kept saying/hoping, maybe not.

I bought a new tensioner in hopes that that was all it was. I bought an oil pan gasket and RTV for the lower and upper pans and for the TC cover and I was readying myself to take the car out of service for a couple, maybe several, weeks as I was going to do this job myself over the course of however many weekends it took.

This past weekend however, I decided I was gonna check something first … the idler pulley.

Guess friggin what?

29 bucks for a new pulley, about an hour’s worth of garage time and now complete silence.

Did I mention “classic TC clatter”?

I’m a little bit of an idiot. An idiot with a bunch of new parts waiting for the proverbial rainy day, but an idiot nonetheless.

Don’t be an idiot like me.

Apparently (well obviously now) a failed idler pulley can exhibit sounds nearly identical to a failed TC tensioner and guides (i.e. classic TC clatter).

Nice! Did you just remove the belt then start the car to tell it was the idler pulley tensioner?

Look at the bright side! You figured out what was causing the problem BEFORE you did all that work. Now you can sell the parts and recover part of what you spent. It would have sucked to do all that work, over several weekends..... and still have that noise. THEN figuring out that a thirty dollar part could have saved you all that work.

so what, was the pulley so bad that it was loose and rubbing up against the metal piece next to it? bet you feel relieved huh? lol

Exactly what I did.

Silly failed bearing.

... and you have no idea of my relief.

I love driving and listening to my car again.

yeah I gotta do mine soon. mine makes cricket noises when it's cold. but then goes away after it's warm.

Be cautious when disassembling the pulley assembly, keeping track of the order of things.

In addition to the bracket; the sliding bolt; the tension adjustment bolt and the long sleeve(ish) tension adjustment nut, there are two washers; a spacer; two dust shields and the lock nut. Their order is important.

Although I got close and reassembled mine based on logic and how things aligned, I got it wrong in that I mis-positioned one washer.

Everything seems perfectly fine but I'm gonna take it apart this weekend (again) and put back together with everything in the correct spots.

Good to know. My car has just about 200K miles and so far no timing chain issues/noises, original water pump etc. I'll keep the idler pulley in mind if I start hearing things.

yeah I've taken mine off/apart a million times lol