I've got two Ecotecs, one in my 03 Cavalier and one in my 03 Saturn Ion. Both of them are over 100K miles. I'm worried about my timing chains, based on stories of them stretching and breaking. How long have you guys seen them go for? How early have you seen them break? Also, any stories of balance shaft chains breaking? Should I change both chains or is it just the timing chain that I should be worried about? Thanks.

Bump to an old thread, but I would like to know the answer to this as well. I have a 05 cavalier with 70K and have read a LOT of stories of the ecotec's chains breaking at around 100K.

Had my balance shaft tensioner blow apart around 80,000

Well its been over a year and a half since I created this post and was notified of these recent comments. So, I thought I'd provide an update. I still have both of my cars with Ecotecs and they both now have over 135k on them. I haven't had any engine problems so far. I'm not going to worry about them until I hear engine noise or go over 150k. (but at that point, the cars won't be worth much and I probably won't worry too much then)

I thinking that I will just leave mine alone too.

Seems like that a rash of failures came from the 02 cars with the bad chain oiler.

There have been some tensioner failures on the other years, but usually the engine is fine after a tensioner replacement as the chain will continue to do it's job, just a bit sloppy.