I have a brand new tensioner pulley and am not sure if the indicator looks correct on this new part. Note the picture, how far to the right it is...is this normal? (can't find info on this anywhere).

 

Should be fine just no belt tension yet to even it out.

 

So the tensioner moves that much to the right without a belt on?

 

 

Curious as to how many miles you have when the old tensioner failed.

 

Not sure if the actual tensioner is failing (106,xxx). My idle pulley and tensioner bearing appear to be going bad, and I think my belt (non OEM) is stretched, so I just decided to replace the entire tensioner unit and be done with it.

 

Fyi, its not difficult to replace the tensioner and idle pully bearings only. The bearings are quite generic and can be found from many sources on Amazon.

This can save a lot, and isn't really all that time consuming.

 

You're right, and I did think of only replacing those components, but due to the age of the car, mileage and that I can afford it, I just went ahead with new OEM. I can resell the used tensioner as it's still good I think for a few bucks so its not that big of a deal.

 

Before I replaced the aftermarket belt with only 30k miles the indicator was at the red line in the picture below. With the new OEM belt it moved to the green line, but the belt was very tight and difficult to get on. I took the belt on an off a few times doing some other work and each time it gets easier to slip over the ridge of one of the pulleys and the indicator has been slowly moving to where it is now over the course of two weeks. After replacing the tensioner itself (I had to wait a week until I got a hex socket) the indicator location did not change. For sanity, I put the old tensioner back on to compare again, but put the new one on (as shown in this pic). So essentially my old one provided the exact same result as the new one.

So I have a couple questions here, with a new belt and new components where should the indicator be?
And did I stretch the belt in the past couple weeks causing? (I've since learned an easy way to slip it on and off the water pump wheel.)

 

I found the new belt just slipped over the pulleys once I rotated the tensioner out of the way with a long handled wrench. Not so for you?

-- Chuck