I own a 05' S MINI with 131K. Bought a piece of garbage replacement part, AC Delco see pic below, off Amazon to replace the still functioning OE Belt Tensioner Pulley while replacing all the belt parts/pulleys in January of 2019. This crap garbage part was trouble from the beginning not to mention it's hell to install. Now that it seems to be getting worse I would like to replace it ONCE AND FOR ALL!! Can anyone recommend a replacement part that will last and that they have had a good history with?
THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!!!!

 

I dont buy anything from Amazon, but from Autodoc (I live in Europe). I replaced my tensioner with an INA tensioner which is holding up nicely. For the other pulley, I bought one from Stark Automotive.

 

If you have a smaller pulley i HIGHLY suggest the alta tensioner on the stock tensioner mount. my cars had it for many many miles and years and not one issue like everyone claims they do ( alta just gets a bad rap but this part is legit).
it allows you to tighten the belt to take out ANY slack AND NEVER have belt slip and can change the belt then too without the specialized belt tool..
trust me, look into it. I have a 17% pulley and can even run a stock belt and have 0 belt slip once adjusted for it,which is easy to do too..

 

doesn’t this take out the point on having the damper in the tensioner ? You have a solid mount now and how often do you adjust it?

thought the damper And the spring is there for a reason. ?

 

Its still a damper, albeit an adjustable one...

 

min familiar with it. Just a little confuse on how’s it going to damper the movement when there’s no damper it’s a solid piece that holds 2 ends?

 

Ow hold on, I just see that it does not seem to be a damper, but a solid piece indeed. You were right serafin!

 

I'm not exactly positive but I'm pretty sure the spring still does allow some springyness if you look at the design it takes away alot of the dampening which is too much for our cars when smaller pulley is used , we have a harmonic dampner on it already to compensate for that too on our crank.
people can say this or that negative about it but anyone who's actually bought it and used it , swears by it..like I said , I've had 0 belt issues..it is adjustable so you just turn it on way or another with a 14mm wrench to add or release tension , I have mine set to the point where I press on my belt with my finger and I can barely move it,so its very very tight.

 

OK, it's do or die time for me to replace this defective junk AC Delco Unit that's 28 months old. I am leaning towards the Febi/Bilstien version. Any last recommendations before I buy this @ ECS Tuning?

 

go with gates or litens, they're basically the same, and the OE manufacturer. FYI, I was able to get a tensioner from my local advance auto parts for $80 shipped to my door and it was a gates part. The only difference between the one I got from them and the one I took off my car (other than functionality) was the areas on the replacement that had BMW/MINI ground off. I'm not usually a proponent of auto parts stores parts, but this one was worth it.

 

What???? That alta part limits the extension of the other half of the tensioner, it cant hit the crank period... it prevents what the failing shock might do in the original design. The tensioner can no longer slam into the crank pulley.