Brand new to the forums and I have done hours of research on this to no avail. I have a 2003 Protege5 2.0 and Im in the middle of replacing water pump and timing belt and have an issue with the tensioner spring.

After aligning all my timing marks up and installing the belt and pulleys my manual says to tighten the tensioner bolt and rotate 2 turns on the crank and to loosen the tension bolt and allow it to set tension on the belt. My spring never moves. I've tried rotating the crank with the bolt tightened and loose and the spring never stretches. I have tried putting an Allen key in the tensioner and turned it towards the firewall stretching the spring and putting tension on the belt and then tightening the bolt. The spring goes to it's rest position always.

I turn the crank and the spring never stretches. I know that the spring is what puts tension on the belt. I'm at total loss here. Someone please help

Edit: the tensioner pulley and spring are brand new

 

Did you get past this? My son and I did the timing belt on his 2003 not long ago. I somewhat remember this step and don't recall having an issue. If you are still having trouble I'll get out the shop manual and reacquaint myself with that step. As an aside, I watched every youtube video available for this job. There's not many, I suppose because the Protege5 was only around a couple years. I would watch the videos and follow along in the shop manual. Not a single youtube video was correct in every aspect of this job. We followed the shop manual instructions exactly and took our sweet time.

 

Here is some commentary I offered in another thread about the tensionor.

-------------------
One point I was never 100% clear on was installing the tensionor before or after the belt. I'm pretty sure the "correct" order is tensionor first then belt. That's what we did. However, I'm sure if it is possible to reverse that order it would be much easier to install the belt keeping all the factory pulley marks positioned correctly.