Timing belt Gates or Contitech

I don't have a problem with Gates. I install lots of those without problem so I went with one on my Z32

Don't cheap out on the timing belt. Get the entire kit with rollers, tensioner and water pump. If it fails it is catastrophic. I use Gates kits all the time.

Usually with auto parts you get what you pay for. So pay a little more for better quality stuff. The brands I like to go with for timing belts are gates and continental.

Gates belt is great but I'm not convinced that anyone not tracking their car needs it. Even then, it's probably not necessary 80% of the time.

My gates belt looks identical to that and has ever since 5 miles after i changed it, and that was like 4 years ago....

I would highly recommend replacing the oem hydrolic tensioner and pulley with a conversion kit to the older style manual mk3 tensioner. The kit provides an idler pulley. Very nice kit from integrated engineering. This is a sure way to avoid another possible failure and i would also recommend going with a gates timing belt. I just did this job on my1.8t and am very happy with it and can sleep peacefully at night knowing i won't have a failure.

If you happen to need the timing belt, tensioner, water pump, oil cooler, thermostat housing, thermostat etc i have literally all of it brand new including the gates racing timing belt, all has literally 0 miles.

New Contitech T-Belt and tensioner

Gates seems to have lost some quality in recent years.

I've had some problems with Gates for timing belts. I've had 2 instances when the timing belt was making noise after installing it, hard noise to describe, basically the belt being very hard. Threw on an OEM belt and it was fine.