Aluminum timing belt idler pulley??
Just purchased a 2005 aveo and with 77,000 miles and it is in need of the timing belt change. I was researching the issues others have had and was wondering if anyone ever found a company that makes an aluminum timing belt idler pulley and water pump pulley to replace the plastic one that seems to fail? Did a search on the forum but didn't find anything.
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Good plastic pulleys are just fine
I realize that this is an old thread, but the same questions about plastic vs metal pulleys are still coming up regularly.
I first changed my timing belt at 50K miles with a Contitech kit which is on the pricey side. After that, I procrastinated on doing the next change, and finally did it a couple of weeks ago at 130K miles (yeah, yeah... I know). These are the parts with 80K miles of wear on them.
The timing belt looked almost pristine. There was not a single rib with rubber missing, or any cracks, and I would have been comfortable going another 20K miles on it:
Attachment 10354
Here are the pulley surfaces:
Attachment 10355
Attachment 10356
None of these parts have been cleaned. This is exactly how they came out of the car.
As you can see, the surfaces are near perfect and very smooth. I hope this will allay concerns people are having about plastic parts. The bearings are what are critical, and they had zero play after 80K miles. I don't have any paid relationship with Contitech, but I would rather trust one of their kits for 100K miles than a metal pulley set from a small unknown manufacturer.