TIMING PULLEY MAYHEM

There are two bearings that press into the block that the oil pump driveshaft spins in. They look just like camshaft bearings in ole school American V8. If you've destroyed these bearing you'll most likely have serious damage all over the motor from bad oiling. I don't believe I've ever heard of anyone having problems with these. Good luck trying to replace these with the engine in the car. Are you sure the bolt is tight on the pulley? Even if the bearing were worn you won't get a lot of play in the pulley. What you are saying really doesn't make sense. You have a hard steel timing gear and a soft rubber belt. How does a piece of soft rubber damage the steel teeth on a timing gear? The only thing I can think of is that someone replace the oil pump DS seal and uses a big pair of channeloks on the outside of the gear to keep it from spinning, hence the damage you see.

Have you taken the top plastic cam cover off and looked? I think you can just see the large pulley your talking about . There is a small idler opposite that pulley with bearings that do go bad that create filings like you are describing .

Sounds like the pulley bolt could be loose . Normally that pulley never gives any problems unless someone else did not tighten the pulley bolt .The aluminum shavings could be comming from the hard pulley wobbling and rubbing against the softer back assembly... that wont hurt a thing. I think if it were me and that bolt was not loose.. then remove the lower crank belt pulley, get 2 new keys for the crank and the replace the 4 seals(2 cams crank and oil pump shaft) , and new timing belt and crank pulley bolt and take a good look at that pump shaft. it does comes out easy once the timing belt is off. There is no way even if the bearings were bad that it could wobble that much.. you would have oil pouring out that seal. My bet is the idler / tensioner bearings are bad. That would normally make a lot of noise.
I hope this helps.

Mad_83,

With the top timing belt cover off, you still won't be able to see the oil pump pulley, all you'll be able to see, is the 2 cam pulleys & the top of the idler/tension pulley. The lower cover will need to come off as well.

I also don't think a bad tension pulley would cause the damage he is having on his oil pump pulley & timing belt, since the damage is occuring on the teeth driven side. The idler/tension pulley puts tension on the "outer" side of the timing belt (the "smooth" side of the belt, not the side w/ the teeth). As mentioned in the past, the idler/tension pulley is basically a giant sealed bearing (for those of you that skateboard & have taken apart you wheel's sealed bearings for cleaning, think of that, only 4X bigger). If anything, the pulley would seize from lack of lubrication, this IMHO would occur before it comes apart.

I'll admit, this one has me stumped as well... Pretty rare that the oil pump driveshaft bearings crap out, unless something has gone horribly wrong!!!