QuestionQUESTION: I very recently bought a 1995 chrysler sebring lxi as in 21 days ago. Well after it decided to quit running we noticed that it tries to turn over, but the timing has slipped. We can see the marks where it has recently been reset and the belt in brand new we also noticed that the belt is a bit loose, and nothing it locked up yet. How to we reset the timing belt and and tighted it back up? I'm broke and thank goodness my dad can fix this if someone tells him what to do.
ANSWER: Is this a 2.5L v-6 engine?
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QUESTION: Yes it is.
ANSWER: Hi Teri,
I have a couple of hard copy manuals for that engine from which I can photocopy and postal mail to you the pages that show how to re-do the timing belt installation. If it is indeed the case that it is no longer in time then it would appear that the job would be identical to that required to replace the timing belt entirely. I have the '95 LXI manual which seems to be derived directly from Mitsubishi and also a '96 domestic Cirrus manual which shows the same engine situation but with a different body. They somewhat supplement one another. It would total to about 12 sides and with postage would cost me about $2 to send. You could reimburse me after you get the pages. I wish I had these on a CD and coult send them electronically but no luck. So if you want me to do the copying let me know a postal mailing address and I will send them to you.
Be careful in working on this timing reset because this is an engine where the valves and pistons can interfere and so you have to avoid large movements of all three sprockets independently of one another or damage to valves can occur.
Use the 'private' option follow-up question to tell me the postal address. I will copy the necessary pages (let me know if you want the Cirrus pages too) and the costs would just be 10 cents per side plug the stamps. There are a couple of special tools, MD998769 to rotate the crank sprocket (may not be critical) and MD998767 to properly torque the timing belt(probably critical) tensioner, made by Miller tool that you would want to check into to find to rent/borrow/buy. Miller makes all the tools used by Chrsyler corp. The slippage may have been due to whoever replaced the belt not having the latter tool.
Roland
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QUESTION: I had my neighbor look at it and it seems as though the belt jumped not even a whole tooth, and the tension is not tight enough which caused the belt to start slipping. The valves and pistons look ok and we have not tried to crank the car since we found out the problem. If this turns out to not be the problem, I will def. hit you up for the manual pages! Thank you!
AnswerHi Teri,
Maybe the timing belt issue is not what is causing the 'no start'. Try turning the ignition key:"on-off-on-off-on and leave on" doing that in 5 seconds or less elapsed time. Then watch the check engine light, which remains 'on', to begin to flash, pause, flash, etc. Count the number of flashes before each pause. Then repeat the process to be sure you have an accurate set of flash counts. Then tell me what those counts are in the order of appearance. These will be codes for what might be the cause of your problem.
If the belt doesn't seem to be under sufficient tension then it would be safer to go through the tensioner setting process, but that requires the tensioner tool that I listed and you would have to remove the crank pulley, timing belt covers, etc. then access the belt tensioner bolts and to apply the torque wrench and thus reset the torque with the tensioner compressed and then pull the temporary pin on the pre-compressed tensioner.
Roland
