Review on 🔗 Gates TCK307 Premium PowerGrip Timing Belt Component Kit by Lonnie Batch

Gates kits used to be great; Good quality OEM pulleys/tensioners + belts. not so much now. Two years ago the tck328 I bought came with basically identical OEM pulleys (the smallest pulley was a fake made in China) and an OEM identical tensioner. When I say identical OEM, I mean same manufacturer (KOYO, NSK, NTN) and manufacturer part number as the dealer. The tck307 kit I just bought comes with two pulleys identical to the OEMs (KOYO and NSK) but the sprocket idler was Chinese Gates branded (Subaru part number 13085AA080) and the tensioner was changed Manufactured by Gates in Canada. Check out the other reviews (for both this kit, tck304 and tck328) for horror stories where the tensioner fails right out of the box or sounds like a bottle of rocks being shaken by a six year old with ADHD. The strap itself also looked a lot worse than the one in the old set - the inner fabric was showing through the ends of the strap. Long story short: extremely disappointed, didn't even start reporting it! You don't have to rely on anything other than genuine parts for the timing control to work. Subaru has interference engines - meaning the pistons and valves occupy the same space at different times. If something goes wrong with your timing belt, all you hear is a click-click-click as your pistons hit the valves, and then you know you have no compression and you tear the engine apart to swap out valves or heads. It's stupid to do this to yourself using crap to work with a timing belt. Guaranteed parts identical to the OEM you need (except for the belt which I hope is just an issue with the one I'm having - Gates has another chance). If you want to reproduce this kit with the correct parts, here is my parts list: NSK AA010 (Subaru part number 13085AA080 - sprocket) KOYO W01331627580KOY (tensioner) NSK W0133-1652558-NSK (tensioner) NTN W01331609420NTN (tensioner) + belt timing of your choice (again, I hope the Gates t307 that comes with the kit separately doesn't look like it was built by a hungover monkey suffering from tremors).