Epilogue. Amazon 3rd party seller agreed to give me a full refund but said belt was ok and he installs timing belts like that all of the time. Why am I not surprised? Since I started this thread I did quite a bit of research and most timing belt manufactures say a belt which has been crimped to the point of having a permanent set (mine had 5) is likely to suffer a premature failure. Why would I risk that on an interference engine? To refresh your memory, seller removed the Bando belt from its box and stuffed both the belt and its box into a Centric brake pad box. Actually would have been easier to put the Bando box in a padded envelope.
