Topic: 22 RE Engine, Rapid Clicking Sound From Front of Engine

[emsvitil]

I''m gonna wake up one of these nights in a cold sweat hearing the sound of my three day old plastic guides snapping and the chain slapping around inside the timing chain cover again like it was. I cannot believe someone designed those things to be so freakin' flimsy. What were they thinking?

$$$$$   My original set lasted about 99,000 (noise).   The second replacement set 45,000 (jumped 2 teeth and trashed timing cover).    The third is a LC dual-row conversion.

I wonder if there's anything you can do to prevent this from happening? Such as allowing a few extra seconds of warm-up time so that enough oil pressure builds up to load up the tensioner properly? Or maybe just not driving at all, that would probably work.

Not driving.........  I'm pretty sure that when the second chain jumped 2 teeth it was at startup....

The thing is, at this point I might as well wait for them to just snap, so going in there again to put metal ones on is not gonna save me any work. But I sure would sleep better at night.

I think they don't snap all at once, but just fall to pieces........


How deep was the groove in the tensioner?

My single chain tensioner (@45,000) was halfway thru.    An old 20r engine with dual-row chain tensioner only showed superficial marks of where the chain was after 110,000......

[JD [OP]]

The tensioner was in great shape for 200,000 miles (though it's possible it was replaced by the Toyota dealer at 100k). The grooves were maybe a millimeter deep, as were the ones in the passenger side plastic guide:



However, the driver's side guide was broken in two pieces and whatever parts of that were supposed to come in contact with the chain were almost completely gone, except for a tiny 1/2 inch section near the bottom of the guide that was still there.