[mark houghton]

Personally....I would convert over to pressure fed for piece of mind as long as you're in there. My old '73 Targa of course had the old style mechanical/hydraulic morphidite tensioners which worked just fine for a long time before one of them didn't, and it wasn't pretty. The conversion kits were a bit out of my price range at the time, but I don't think I would bat an eye today.

Meanwhile, those collars are supposed to prevent the tensioner from completely collapsing and as far as I know (which isn't much) they do or should work in that regard.