My brother-in-law has a '91 Eclipse. About 6 months ago the was reving the engine at a light (showing off for his kids) and popped the timing belt. Some shade tree mechanic installed another one for him along with a new water pump or something and found that the head was damaged. So he took it to a real shop and they told him that the cost would be between $1,200 and $1,500. Well, when he picked it up a month later, the bill was $1,500+.

So he drives the car around for 100 days and guess what, the car stops running. Has it towed to the shop where he got the timing belt done and low and behold the timing belt is busted again. So the owner figures that it may have been a bad tensioner, since they did not replace the old one. Why the bill was $1,500+ with an old tensioner, we do not know. Anyway, the shop owner honors his work and has the head, belt, etc., replaced again at no cost to my brother-in-law. This time he said he installed a new tensioner and everything was fine.

So, I go with him to pick it up. When we did, I asked the shop owner if we should take it easy on the car since it had a rebuilt head? He said no. I then as if we should do an early oil change and he said no. Off we go. We drove around 20 miles and parked the car. The next day we drove the car around 10 miles and parked. The very next day the car would not start. I told my brother-in-law that it must be something else. He would not check it out and had it towed back to the shop. Guess what??? Timing belt again. The shop owner said the belt was there but jumpped what looks like 2 teeth on the belt.

Any ideas on what could cause this? When my brother-in-law 1st got the car I told him to have the belt replaced and not to put any other money into it because of it's age and the fact the the exterior was a 2 out of 5 (no body damage but bad finish) and the interior was a 3 out of 5 (just average for age).

 

That's indeed weird!!

I would have them ck for runout on the cam(s) and crank pulley. Not familiar with eclipse drivetrain at all though..