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Originally Posted by Daves911L
Coastr,
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but looking at your photo I think I see a slight problem. After a fresh rebuild, the upper aluminum sealing plug should be protruding above the steel cap. The upper chamber thus created between the piston and the sealing plug becomes an oil reservoir. As the tensioner slowly loses oil, it can then be replenished from that reservoir up until the point the sealing plug bottoms out against the housing. From then on, the loss of oil starts to soften the tensioner. Even with renewed seals, there will still be some slight loss of oil past the seals. So your fresh rebuild will not last as long since there is no reservoir of oil above the piston.
Creating this reservoir makes it trickier to install the sealing plug. You get the piston all filled with oil and bled, then top up the housing with oil to the point that you can just install the sealing plug, spring, cap, and circlip. Too much oil and the circlip won't fit. Too little and you don't have as much reserve oil capacity. When full, the spring above the sealing plug gets about 100% compressed, so you have to press pretty firmly to get the circlip in. If it is too full, the bleed screw on the side can be opened, but just the tiniest amount. You are working with a very small volume of oil in that reservoir to start with, under a fair amount of pressure from the spring, and it will come out that bleed port pretty darned quick. You may have to fill and bleed it a couple times to "get the feel" for doing it.
DG
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Ok... I don't think the piston (the double O-Ringed aluminium piece) can protrude above the cap. However, I did push down the piston until the point that the bleeder was no longer pushing out air.
I was working on a combination of the Haynes manual and instructions posted from this thread :
Rebuilding Tensioners
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clamp the unit in a vise at the lower mounting point. pop out the top snap ring by slipping a pointed tool under it by way of the notch and remove the steel disc and weak spring below it. loosen the side bleeder bolt and grab the center of the aluminum disc with your real small pliers and pull it out. the o-ring around it is a common o-ring and usually that's the only thing wrong with it. it blows out and lets in air. air is compressable, ya know. usually, when you remove the top clip and steel disc, you see a section of that o-ring blown out. the plunger is removed the same way, by removing it's snap ring with a pointed tool. CAUTION, to retain vision in your eye, do not look directly down on the plunger. if it pops up and pokes your eye, i'm not responsible. turn the body upside down and remove the plunger with it's internal parts. observe the positions of the big spring, aluminum cup, tiny spring and check ball and check ball seat. if you have a repair kit, these come in it. otherwise clean and be sure the plunger is not scarred and moves freely in it's bore. reassemble the items into the plunger, turn the plunger upside down and lower the tensioner body onto it. keep your thumb on it. clamp the base of the body in a vise again, push the plunger down and get the snap ring started on one side and hold it there with a small screwdriver. use another small screwdriver to push the other side in. AGAIN, don't look directly down on the plunger. a few cuss words and a few tries and the snap ring finally pops in. snug the side bleeder screw. fill the body 1/2 way up with oil, slowly so as not to introduce air bubbles. you noticed the two holes in the top of the plunger when it was out. insert a tiny piece of wire into one hole to depress the check ball, and slowly work the plunger in and out. add more oil if needed. the idea is to get any air out of the lower chamber. pull out the wire and test for firmness. no play is what we want. with about 1/2" of oil in the body, open the bleeder, tilt the tensioner so the bleeder is angled up and insert the aluminum disc with the little pliers and push in until all the air goes out the bleeder. tighten the bleeder. install the top snap ring, metal disc and spring. compress slowly in a vise and then release and check for slop. don't want any. compress again and slip the installation tool over it and mount in the chain housing. channel-locks work in a pinch, but they're clunky.
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Neither instruction really says how much oil to leave in the top reservoir between the piston and the plunger top - both just talk about bleeding. The Haynes manual says to just push the piston down firmly and then bleed.
I can pop the top back off them, lift the piston up and put more oil in, but I'm just following the instruction to tilt the tensioner in the vice at 20 degrees off vertical and bleed until no more air. Each time I try and top up the oil, I assume air will remain at the top and bleed until the piston is more or less past the bleeder hole, and that will be the correct reservoir level...There is no way to introduce oil underneath the piston and have the oil level higher than the bleed screw without also having air in the system.
Someone can correct me where I am wrong...the tensioners are not in the car yet as I am waiting on delivery of safety collars. I might pull out the top snap ring and re-check, but I don't see how you can get a fill level to the point that the piston top would be visible at the top of the steel disc. The top spring would be under a lot of tension at that point, and that means you haven't bled air because you haven't pushed the piston down to the point where an air gap would allow air to escape the bleeder at a 20 deg angle.