Anyone know if any of the timing chains from Advance Auto are any good?

**Smokin2000gtp** · 09-18-2015

My buddy gets a huge discount through Advance Auto because he works for Merlin's and uses their account discount. Are any of their timing chains and dampeners any good? They stock ones made by Malhe and Carquest but I haven't heard of anything about the quality of either.

**Spawne32** · 09-19-2015

Mahle is a well known brand in the performance aftermarket and OEM replacement parts, id trust those parts no problem. Carquest i wouldnt touch, but its likely a rebrand of another brand. For the amount of money it costs (like 30 something bucks retail) on advance, go on rockauto.com and buy any of the good timing chains they have available. Cloyes, sealed power, acdelco, all reliable.

**Turbocharged400sbc** · 09-19-2015

CARQUEST is probably the cloyes setup.
Mahl or cloyes is great.
Make sure the tensioner plastic pad is one solid uniform gray....if you can see color/iridescent swirls. ...its the old crack prone unit like the oem

**Timing** · 09-19-2015

Cloyes chain would probly be ok but as far as damp just get an ac delco

**Turbocharged400sbc** · 09-19-2015

AC Delco is Cloyes. ...the problem I find is that almost every AC Delco tensioner is the bad molding / plastic whereas in the Cloyes box I get the new nice flat grey plastic that does not split in half and fall into the bottom of the timing cover.
you do not want old stock. I only got one old style tensioner in a cloyes set up and that box looked pretty beat up like it had been shipped around the country 15 times...
just make damn sure its one solid consistent gray plastic. make damn sure it is not the darker iridescent with swirls half of the bad ones you can actually see the molded and weakness where it will crack through.

**Spawne32** · 09-19-2015

Originally Posted by Turbocharged400sbc

AC Delco is Cloyes. ...the problem I find is that almost every AC Delco tensioner is the bad molding / plastic whereas in the Cloyes box I get the new nice flat grey plastic that does not split in half and fall into the bottom of the timing cover.
you do not want old stock. I only got one old style tensioner in a cloyes set up and that box looked pretty beat up like it had been shipped around the country 15 times...
just make damn sure its one solid consistent gray plastic. make damn sure it is not the darker iridescent with swirls half of the bad ones you can actually see the molded and weakness where it will crack through.

That's because ACdelco doesnt actually make their own parts, they are a distributor for GM's OEM replacement parts. 9 times out of 10 acdelco parts will be branded with another mfg logo. For instance ignition coils typically are denso coils (least for the coil on plug cars) very rarely have i see an acdelco branded part come through. Most acdelco sensors are delphi, bosch, denso, etc.

**Smokin2000gtp** · 09-19-2015

Already ordered a Cloyes chain and damper from rockauto so we will see how the setup works out.

**Jomamma** · 09-19-2015

I got my cloyes timing chain off amazon.

Then I got the dampener from intense, sadly its the swirled dampener.

**Turbocharged400sbc** · 09-19-2015

its s*** like this that makes me just machine a double roller and toss it in and forget about it

**Jomamma** · 09-19-2015

Yeah this is the one I just put it.

It looked all funky even like it already had cracks in it so I snapped a pic

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**Turbocharged400sbc** · 09-20-2015

Yeah gm is saving money for not "rebranding" the AC Delco stuff anymore than they have to.
under the old GM before the recession tier 1 suppliers were required to print AC Delco on their parts.... afterwards all the tier 1 suppliers said f*** you and now inside the AC Delco box you will find the real name of the tier one supplier GM has been using... and yes there's not a huge amount of tier 1 suppliers