IP on crooked? Timing belt wearing on one side

[86jetta1.6]

So in troubleshooting my Jetta IP (another thread) I removed a known good pump off my running '86 jetta and installed it on my '81 1.6. Car runs good now but the pulleys obviously do not line up because the outer edge of the pulleys are wearing unevenly. I can even see that the timing belt is crooked. Is there a difference in pumps or the mounting plates between an 81' 1.6 and an '86 1.6? The '86 used those bolts that have removeable nuts behind the pulley but the 81 had the mounting plate with the permenant nuts atttached to the plate. Is this pump usable on this car or do I need to find a different style pump? The original pump I sent to rebuilder but he said some items were seized internally and it wasn't rebuildable.

Just trying to figure out if I should spend the day messing with this with trial and error or if i should wait to find another '81 pump. I have a '82 vanagon diesel i could borrow the pump off of if need be but it hasn't been run since '06 so i dont know if that one is any good either

[Fatmobile]

Which side is the belt wearing on?
With the belt loose, does the timing sprocket have alot of play, side_to_side?

[86jetta1.6]

Wearing on the edge farthest from the block, so i would say "outside" edge

[82vdub]

I don't believe that there is any difference in the mounting of the IP's and there's not a difference in the belts and pullys as they all interchange. Check for the movement as fatmobile has asked and see what you can find out. If the timing belt isn't tracking properly on the IP pully, most times the IP can be adjusted a bit so that the belt can ride fully on the IP pully. The intermediate shaft pully has a shoulder on it (at least some of them do), so this could be wearing at the belt, or if the belt rides too close to the engine it can wear. However, as mentioned above, it's usually the issue of the IP not being perpendicular to the belt orientation - or better stated that the IP main shaft (and pully) isn't perpendicular to the belt orientation.

[Fatmobile]

Either way it's not a fun fix.
If the mainshaft bushings are so loose the sprocket is tilted, it will need to be taken apart.
If it isn't tilted too bad the 2 bolts holding the bracket to the block might be able to be adjusted.
There are several complete posts on the subject.

[colby]

I had a belt track that way on an IP pulley. It was wearing the outer edge of the belt. Quite a bit actually. It wasn't doing it prior, and I figured out that when I put the IP on, I did something wrong with the way it was mounted to the IP bracket. I ended up inadvertently moving it one way or another, and it moved just enough to bring everything back into alignment and the belt tracked fine after that. I ended up replacing the belt to be safe, but it occured after a pump change and nothing else had been touched.

I loosened the 3 front bolts and the bottom rear bolt, and pushed the pump as a whole backwards without tiling it and it straightened it out good. You can manipulate the pump this way (without retarding or advancing specifically) and tighten it back down, rotate by hand a couple times, and see if you can get it tracking proper. Its hard to explain in words, what I actually did, but I figured I screwed something up because it was fine before the pump change.

[damac]

I just had an incident with an engine I had out on the stand and put in my truck. Thought all was well until I came back from my first drive and mine was tracking off cam pulley. Had to fix it because I run covers

So I tried to adjust the bracket, which has always worked for me on other cars, except for one pump that had wobbly mainshaft bushings. I went to one extreme to the other, even used a dremel and mad a tad more room to adjust.

No go so I started freaking out and reading forums and starting at square one. I had the injection pump bracket on another car so looked into the tensioner stud, maybe I bumped it during install and bent it or something. To my horror I found although the tensioner was tight the nut looked like it was on the stud off center. Don't know how I missed it. Ended up taking it off and the tensioner was dimpled in which I have never seen. I got it for a deal from somebody on ebay supposedly new, again can't believe I didn't notice it.

So I got a new tensioner and stud just for the hell of it and what do you know, now the belt tracking was reacting to my swings of the bracket each way and I got it running fine now



Its is an annoying job since you have to take the injection pump off, but when you do just use the pump lock pin, and clamp the timing belt to each pulley area so the belt doesn't jump off the crank sprocket. This will allow you to slowly feed the keyway back onto the pulley, then you can hand tighten and snug and torque to pull everything back into place so you only need to adjust the timing once your bracket is adjusted. I like to use my starter after taking the lock pin out! Just because I'm lazy and it can spin engine over a bunch more than me. Do it for a bit and then you will know where its tracking.