I really appreciate the detailed follow-on posts here.

 

I went out and bought a new gates tensioner from a parts store and the damn thing has bearing play out of the box. So that got me a little curious and decided to check the new idler..



Surprise, it has bearing play as well. I'm getting to the point where I'm not trusting Gates replacement parts minus the belts. I'm headed to the dealership in the morning to grab an oem tensioner and idler.



Once I get the parts on, I hope this resolves the issue.

 

Soooo... five days and $200+ dollars later I think the issue has been resolved. I made a mini road trip to gather the rest of the parts (Hyundai tensioner and idler) and installed everything today. I torqued everything to spec and made sure that the belt was even on both sides and checked it multiple times with a straight edge.



The belt still walked to the edge but there is about 1mm left on the cam gear and the belt no longer wobbles nor does it appear to be rubbing anything so I am calling this a win. I will keep an eye on it but I'm pretty confident it will stay where it's at.



I'm not sure if using all OEM parts corrected the issue or not but I'm not complaining. On the plus side, changing the timing belt is a pretty quick process for me now. Haha.

 

I've noticed that my timing belt doesn't stay centered on the pulleys either, but it does stay on the pulleys. So long as we're not headed this direction, it's okay-enough for me vM0ZUKe.jpg