Valve Clearance & Timing Belt Story
After consulting this piece of info, I kinda developed weham & thus asked my mechanic to check the valve clearance as we have driven this engine 40k kms till now.
Mechanic said if you are not facing any issue then no need to worry, I somehow persuaded him to check the clearances as I was noticing loose tappet noise on cold start for initial 10 seconds only.
And when we lifted up the tappet cover, valve clearances to dur ki baat, timing belt ki condition daikh k hosh urr gaye.
The timing belt was at its last breath, I was really worried k why this premature wear n tear happened with belt halankay we replaced it last year along with water pump & this belt had done only 20k kms till now.
After a sleepless night & a lot of internet surfing & with the help of very kind & technical fellow @effaf27 ,came to a conclusion that we were using wrong timing belt. There was a difference in teeth profile of the belt that came out of the engine vs the original belt part number mentioned in manual.
This one is of 4afe.
And this is for 7afe.
See the part number for mitsuboshi i.e. 121MY21
And here we got one, with the same part number.
Actually 4a & 7a uses different timing belts with different number of teeths & teeth profiles, the belt that came out of my engine in such a bad shape, was of 4afe. Bcz the last mechanic, who replaced it, didn't knew that. Khair jo b hua, acha hua, kam az kam road/highway/motorway py nhi toota timing belt.
Finally belt replaced, valve clearance was a bit loose on 2 of the exhaust valves. Machinist replaced the 4 shims/sikkay in total & Alhamdolillah no more noise on cold startup.
This is just a sample pic of shims/sikkay.
Overall engine is still as clean as it was on day 1 of the swap.
