Riddle me this - timing belt woes

[rasp]

The car has maybe 10k on this timing belt, which was changed less than a year ago to accommodate some top-end modifications (cams and the like). The car has previously ran perfectly.

So yesterday, after spending hours running errands, with no issues, I return home and shut the car off. About 3 hours later I get back in the car to head somewhere else, start it, and here an awful almost dull grind. I immediately turn the car off and pop my hood. Initially I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary...then I checked my cam gears and timing belt and this is what I found:







I have no idea what caused this, and no work has been performed on the motor in quite some time aside from the addition of a new intake manifold gasket maybe 3 months ago. As you can see, the timing belt inner cover has chunks taken out of it, and there's a deep groove in the timing belt, along with obvious signs of violent confliction with the plastic of the cover. The cover is broken in the front, AND in the back. The cut goes all around the diameter of the belt.

I started the car up despite this, and the car idled like normal again, and even went for a ride and all was fine.

So alas, I am now in the process of changing the timing belt out, and figured this would be a perfect time to rid myself of the Fidanza gears, too. I have no idea what could have caused this. My only guess is that some road debris somehow made its way between the timing belt and the plastic cover and when I started my car, it whipped around, breaking the plastic cover and the sharp plastic from the cover mangled my timing belt.

I can't say I'm too thrilled since I own none of the special tools required to do the job, though I plan on renting them this week. I am going to order the materials I need to do this from S&P tomorrow (timing belt, OEM tensioner, gaskets, etc.). Water pump was changed when the timing belt was initially installed less than a year ago so I am not replacing that.

[Darksyde]

Damn that sux brotha. I hope you get it fix asap.

[uncommon©]

Damn that sucks. I've always been afraid of this happening to me, but knock on wood it hasn't yet. Maybe this thread will finally motivate me to modify a stock cover to fit over the fidanza gears.

[rasp]

Quote: Originally Posted by Darksyde

Damn that sux brotha. I hope you get it fix asap.

Yeah already in the process. Just have to wait until I can get the parts needed from S&P and run to Autozone to rent the correct harmonic balancer puller.

Quote: Originally Posted by uncommon©

Damn that sucks. I've always been afraid of this happening to me, but knock on wood it hasn't yet. Maybe this thread will finally motivate me to modify a stock cover to fit over the fidanza gears.

I'm just glad I was able to hear the problem instead of driving the car and the timing belt snapping due to that rubbing and causing all sorts of shit to hit the fan. On the contrary, the tensioner has NEVER been replaced and I was contemplating doing that at some point, too; as well as getting rid of the Fidanza's. This is sooner than I had expected and I'm severely ill-prepared to do this swap with where I'm residing but there are no reputable SRT-4 mechanics within a decent circumference and the car is clearly not drivable with a belt like that....and I have no trailer, so I'm stuck doing it myself.

[GreaseMonkey69]

if i lived any where near ohio i would help ya!
your right it looks like your belt did catch something and threw it through the cover. no wonder you have been asking me alot of q's about this stuff i have been looking at modifying the stock cover to accommodate the gears to possibly make a cover for it so stuff like this does not happen..