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How to find the month my car was built


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I need a timing belt replaced on my car. I looked it up on ebay and I need to know if it was built in Feb or March of 1997. I cant find it anywhere on my car. I thought it was on the door plate but no such luck. So I looked on every badge under the hood and still nothing. Help???

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Depending - on the IMP they stopped the Phase 1 2.2 at the end of FEB and started the Phase 2 2.2 in March.

 

Literally a "line change" - the only "real" difference is whether the tensioner pulley can be bought "separately" or it needs to be bought as a "unit" (the "tensioner hydraulic unit" doesn't go bad usually) If you want a pulley kit, you need to know which engine (and unless you want to take it apart, you need to know the month to know which engine you have)

 

that and the Phase 2 is an interference engine :) - which is "nice" to know (unless you break a timing belt) :(

 

it's apparent on sight - either it's the single bolt tensioner (phase 2), or the 2 bolt tensioner (phase 1)

 

remember - he was asking about the e-bay kit (probably from importexperts) and will likely do it himself.

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Right but even if the tensioner is different the belt interchanges just fine. Interference or not, same belt. When they change over to the heads that look just like 2.5SOHC heads then you have a major change but the 90-98's all take the same belt whether interference or not, newer tensioner or older tensioner, its the same.

 

The complete belt and idler kit would be different of course. The one would include a tensioner bearing and the other an entire tensioner.

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I'm not just looking to buy the belt. I want the whole master kit with seals and water pump but most importantly the tensioner. I was under the impression that my car had an interference motor. It would be great if it wasn't.

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So it's apparently a phase 1 engine.

 

You might want to leave the cam seals as-is unless they are easy to get out (the small "hook" from harbor freight worked well).

 

Being honest - I only replaced the driver's side mostly because of the problem with driving in the "new" seal (a PVC 1-1/4 in non threaded pipe cap works well) and because it was visibly leaking. the pax side wasn't leaking. The o-rings (the 2 large dia. ones) do the front (drivers) and rear (pax) cam end cover. The rear is a bit difficult to get to (and I didn't do it either). IF you pull the driver side seal first, you can pull the cam end cover cap easily - if you drive the new seal on in place, it's a LOT MORE DIFFICULT to pull off. Since those are compression o-rings, they don't tend to leak anyway

 

Remember to remove and reseal the oil pump. Those back screws seem to work loose - loctite them in (use red if you have it) permatex anaerobic seal works for sealing the pump itself back to the block. Do the front mainseal while you have the oil pump out. the "full kit" also supplies the blue o-ring to seal the oil pressure outlet between the pump and the block. Porc73 noted that some oil pumps might have a plastic rear plate - if it does, get a replacement. He said the plastic doesn't hold up and I'm not about to worry about it (the one I was fixing was steel anyway).

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The plastic part often referred to is the oil separator, that is plastic on certain soob engines and the upgrade is a metal part. It has nothing to do with the oil pump.

Metal one with new screws

rms-metal1-sm.jpg

 

Goes here:

rms-metal2.jpg

 

The oil pump rotor cover screws sometimes backed out, letting oil leak out the front crank seal and sometimes even pushing the seal out.

 

If you have the older black colored cam and crank seals, those are more likely to leak. The newer brownish ones hold up better.

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