Gonna order one as soon as the car gets mothballed for the winter. I generally only notice mine on warm starts but my wife says she can hear it if I drive by while she stands in the driveway.

 

The bolt has to be used to retract it no matter what.

Once retracted, if the pin hole is clear, pin it.

If not, double check if the piston is fully wound back. If so, leave the holding bolt in the TCT and check preload/install.

 

10-4. I worded my post wrong, but I understand. Thanks again.

 

A little late to the party, but another happy customer reporting in. I replaced the stock TCT with the Billman Gen X version recently. Easy install. Easy transaction. Thank you Billman!

 

Damn my broke self, I want to get Billman's TCT as I just started having the noise occasionally, it happens randomly, sometimes it happens when the car is cold, sometimes it happens at the end of a drive, sometimes it ticks for a second after turning on a warm car, sometimes it doesn't happen at all. Just wish I didn't have to wait for a paycheck to do so.

 

InlinePRO uses steal pins. we have sold hundreds of these units and never had one come back. So i don't know where people are getting info regarding our failing .

P.S. If you know someone that has our tensioner and it failed please have them call us and we will gladly fix it for them.

 

Billman,

These sound good. I want one.
Will you please send to New Zealand?
What cost are these units?
My engine is stock now, BUT in a year or just less I will have cams, turbo and ~600hp.

Cheers,
Scott.

 

Sure just PM me for inquires.

 

If you're a lazy guy/gal and don't want to use the pin-out method, you can use a bolt and nut to hold in the piston, but when you remove the bolt and nut here's a little tip I discovered.

I use a wing nut to make it easier for me. What I do is retract the piston all the way, as if I was going to pin it in, then when I pop the TCT in, I hold the bolt with a ratchet, and undo the wing-nut, the piston extends to the correct length as long as the bolt is not rotated at all until the piston seats with the chain guide hammer(don't know the actual name for the surface the TCT piston pushes on the guide), once the piston makes contact with the chain guide hammer remove the bolt. I verified this by opening the maintenance hole and observing the movement of the piston, when I removed the bolt by turning it, it would extend the piston, probably because the worm gear was being spun out of it's location inside the piston causing it to extend. But if you hold the bolt with a ratchet, the worm gear doesn't turn at all, and undoing the wing nut just causes the piston to extend to whatever the spring tension forces the piston to extend.

This is fine in my opinion, I've seen stock TCT's with over 100k miles pop out of their location after removing the bolts because the spring tension forces it out, what you don't want is the worm gear extending the piston because the worm gear has FAR more resistance to compression than the springs do. This is what causes engine destruction. By it's very nature the device is designed to create tension, if you do it right you get tension on the guide and everything is in equilibrium and we're all happy. If you do it wrong you create an immovable force that causes moving parts to clash until the weakest one gives way.

 

Do I understand it right, that when installing a new TCT with "official recommended" pin removal method, worm gear is free to turn, unlike in this case?