Gates 7401-0076 Pencil Type Tension Tester, 30 lbs Deflection Force

Ordered for my husband and it works great.

I have an '04 Hyundai Elantra and I had replaced all my drive belts (3 total) and tensioner pulley on the air conditioning belt due to a squealing sound. The work was a bit of a pain to do, but the manual mentioned that I needed to tighten the belts to various tension measurements with 22lbs of force. I thought, I can guess what that is and tightened the belts till they felt tight. 2 days later it was cold and my belts started squealing again. I did a little research to find what kind of tool would let me know if I tensioned my belts correctly and came across this device. I use gates parts and belts and have had good success, so I figured I'd give this guy a try. It is very easy to use, you push down on the center of the belt with the plastic part of this tension tester in the palm of your hand. I used a straight edge across the belt and pushed the rubber gasket (on the thicker part of the tensioner) up between 8-11 mm or 12-15mm(depending on what each belt called for) and pushed down on the tensioner till that gasket was level with my straight edge. Then I looked at the small gasket to see how many pounds of pressure I had exerted. If It was say 15 lbs and I needed to get to 22, I would tighten the belt and try again. And I'd do the reverse if it was a higher reading. At any rate, using this device I found that I had significantly under-tightened all of my drive belts. Since using this, I'm confident they are at the correct tension and I no longer have any squeals.

Fits the specific application well (there not many economical options besides this device for a 25 lb belt test force), but it is a bit expensive for what it is, especially because (a) the lower O ring was not included and (b) the stickers are not well-aligned to the shaft axis (i.e., they were not applied with great care). For the 25 lb measurement I found the force scale to be within 10% accuracy, which is suitable.

Works great I use it to accurately set tension on belts for my tractors.

Works great to determine deflection of the belt. Going on a standard auto fan belt I needed to locate in the service manual which span was supposed to be measured (they are not all the same length) and the expected deflection at 22 lbs. Using this tool and a straight edge that could span from one belt pulley to the other (giving me a straight reference line), I depressed the belt to the maximum deflection amount, pulled it out, and looked at the pressure-applied reading. As expected this was less than the 22 lbs of force which should be able to deflect it less than that, so I tightened until I got a reading > 22lbs. I then did the same for the minimum deflection amount, and made sure that that was under 22 lbs. Easy as can be, just needs a bit more access to the belts than the "kricket" kind (but much more foolproof in the measurement). Also, my old Subaru lists deflection amounts, but not tension readings, so the "kricket" kind would require some math to convert from the tension reading it gives along with the belt span length to the actual deflection distance.Given that this is a spring-based device I would assume that at some point the spring would stretch and the calibration (reading of how much force you are actually applying) would be off. I would recommend calibrating with a known-good scale in the expected (in my case, 22 lbs) range periodically to make sure you aren't over-tightening your belts.

If you need to check belt tension this works but I didn’t find it to be a precision unit and it seems expensive for how well (or not well) it functions. But there aren’t many out there with 30 lbs capability so if you need the ballpark testing it does your options are limited and the market rules.

I haven’t used it yet but I bought it specifically because the product description indicated country of origin as the US. Turns out it’s made in China. Amazon lied. Their responsibility to vet any info on the products they sell.

Used for a timing belt job, and it worked. simple to use. watch a video.