Has anyone tried Mike Hamilton\'s Manual Tensioner?

I dug up this old post where he and Peter Meier see pretty enthused about it. I have an old one here that I was thinking about converting to save some money, but does anyone have any thoughts regarding reliability?

Ghislain I noticed you were looking into it back then too, what did you conclude?

I guess the first bit of peace of mind is that my search didn't turn up anything negative about them.

** Thought I'd change the title in honour of the old post **

That was a while ago.

I made one but never install it on a car. I through it out.

Would I install one on a Car??? No, just because it has not been proven and the consequence of a failure would mean busted Valves...

Ghislain.

Is Mike the only one that you've ever heard running one? And for that matter do you know if it held up for him?

It'd be hard enough for the bolt to back out, let alone if you coated it in high temp heavy loctite. I think I'd be willing to give it a go, as least if no one's had one fail on them yet.

Does anyone know if there's any way to get in touch with Mike Hamilton now, just to see how it worked out for him?

It has been a while since we heard of him.

Is there an e-mail addy on his site??? If so you could drop him a line.

Ghislain.

You REALLY don't have much to gain.

However, you have an engine to lose.

A new tensioner is $100 an engine is worth.....

I get what you guys are saying, I was just impressed with the ingenuity behind it, plus I got the feeling that Mike had more faith in these than the stock pressurized units since a couple of them failed? There's just no info on them since we're all rightly scared to try it.

On the other hand, I have to ask myself why they wouldn't have just designed a solid piece in the first place.

I think the stock one also act as a damper.

Ghislain.

A fellow dsm'er that is quite cometative in the drag racing field runs a manual tensioner. Made it himself, and swears by it. This is maybe more practical for a track car because he is always checking the tensioner.

A local DSMer also made one. Put it on with all confidence. Lost his engine after a single turn around the block with it. That was it for him.

A local guy here does that with his tensioners - of course I told him that I'd buy a new tensioner when we did the T-Belt on my Eclipse though...

That's scary, do you know why it failed so quickly?

** 'do', not 'so' **

No, I don't. But the guy doing it was no dummy.