Timing chain oil slinger

[1994redram]

Thats gnarly! How does a round link tear up nylon like that?

I never expected to see that when I pulled the cover off. I had soaked the new chain in oil before installing it and also put a light coating of assembly grease on the guides. The picture shows the pressure side of the tensioner, the other side which is just a guide was pretty torn up also. Had low miles on it.

I put the engine back together with new bearings and swapped in a bigger cam and left the tensioner out this time.

 

[pishta]

I bought a silent chain for the 273 with a tensioner. No need for a double roller in that. I think an $80 true double roller is overkill on anything, as often as we take our motors apart. Are you buying them for longevity (really?) or the last 1 ft/lb of torque? SRT hemis come with a link belt!!! Ooh, and notice the (lack of) hydraulic tensioner. They would not skimp on this link belt piece to save a buck as no one is buying an SRT to save money. Sure they had a huge recall on these chains breaking but it was only in the 4cyl mode on automatics, so it wasnt an issue with exceeding the torque capacity of the chain, but more of a harmonics or hydraulic tensioner issue.

VVT version with hydraulic tensioner and SAME "lo-po" link belt...(its not).

 

[nm9stheham]

Snowmobiles use silent type drive chains...so it is not a matter of strength per se. But they stretch a lot more and you need to adjust a new snowmobile drive chain after a few hundred miles, and then again regularly. They just tend to stretch a lot more than better chains (due the materials I am gonna guess). No wonder the above engine has a tensioner; I imagine they use the silent chain for noise levels but need to keep it from flapping around too much. That is a much nicer looking setup than the simple sprung chain tensioner, and looks very much like the better setups I am used to.

I remember that Chevy 350's had a common issue of the silent chains stretching and flapping around so much that the slopping around would literally wear through the lower right hand corner of the stamped timing cover and you'd have a massive oil leak. I recall epoxying up a timing cover on one of my wife's cousin's 350 so he could get home to Nashville...I'm sure he never had it fixed beyond that LOL

And FWIW, yes I do build with durability in mind myself. If you spend $1500-2000 entering and towing 500-1000 miles to a rally, having something break in the event due to cheap parts is a really bad day.