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Hey all,
Tomorrow I’m going to be pulling my car apart to replace the timing belt (and tensioner/idler), water pump, water pump inlet, and every heater hose (including my metal heater lines which have rusted badly), and all my engine/transmission mounts (if time allows).
I’ll post a photo essay in this thread once I’m finished (and a friend of mine might video it). This is defiantly going to be interesting, Wish me luck!
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Look forward to seeing it… Take lots of pictures and tell us all about it!
No luck needed…. Do your best!!!
Cheers!
I have a set of Subaru twin cam timing belt pictures in the works. I used a Dayco kit with some interesting results. Gotta mow the lawn first – while I can still see the house from the street.
Subie DOHCs are pretty tricky from what I recall.
This one is going to be especially interesting because I not only have to pull the harmonic balancer from the crank, but I also have to remove some engine mount through bolts and jack the engine up and down to get to many of the timing components (as my engine is transversely mounted and all of the timing stuff is stuffed up against my front passenger shock tower…) Also, basically the entire accessory drive system must be dismantled before the lower timing cover can even come off. Not really rocket science, but it’s the little stuff that’ll slow me down I think.
I look forward to seeing those. In a tight workspace the photography could be challenging too.
ToyotaKarl has a full garage. Stop by and see his project.
This repair is taking longer than I expected. I’m going to finish it up and post some pictures in the next few days. I have less pictures than I would have hoped, but at least it can show the difficulty of the job.
Please do post those pictures because at this point this is nothing more than a discussion about a repair rather than a post about a repair. Anyone looking for this information might not benefit due to the way you’ve gone about this post. Perhaps you should consider starting a new post when you’re ready to post about the repair and we can move this one to another location. Just a thought. Good luck with the rest of that job.
I’ll post some pictures tonight. That said, I ran into a big issue and I need a little help. I finished putting everything back together today, and when I started the car and it barely wanted to start. While starting it, I gave it some gas and it ran fine. The problem is that it dies after a second when it idles.
Could this be a belt tension issue? If the cams were out of time, the valves would hit and it wouldn’t want to run at all. If the crank was out of time with the cams it would want to die regardless of throttle (I think). I checked my timing 4 times after turning the engine over each time, so I’m not that it’s an issue of the timing marks not matching up.
Also, I have a coolant leak (which I think is the result of an aftermarket part not fitting in exactly right.
Thoughts? This is my daily driver and it’s hard on my whole family not having my car drivable. I really appreciate your insight.
EDIT: The more that I think about this, the more I think that I forgot to plug in the MAP sensor all the way. The engine sounded normal when running around 1.5-2k, but dies at idle. I can’t hear the belt slapping on the timing cover, and it’s not squealing either. Again, it would probably run like crap at any rpm if it was out of time. I have to wait a day to experiment (since it’s raining pretty hard right now), but thoughts?
As promised, some pictures and some comments.
Here is what I’ve been working on:
Here is a pic of the tools I have at my disposal for this repair (at least the tools I hauled out of my basement).
A better close up of the tools:
After jacking and placing stands, first the wheel comes off:
Next, the inner splash shield gets removed. Notice the HF panel clip pliers. They make this part a breeze.
Magnetic parts trays are handy for a big job like this. Ideally, have 5 or more to keep track of every nut and bolt (though I didn’t have that many, so I made do:
And the splash shield is out. It is kept in place by 3 bolts that attach it to the front bumper guard, two that attach it to the front fender, and 4 panel clips (that tend to brake if they’re not removed with the right tool)
This is where I start working under the car. And this is a shot of my cameraman stating the importance of good safety goggles:
Here I’m removing the alternator belt and power steering belt.
Not going to lie, this part sucks (but it is easier than getting at some of the parts to come). To remove the belt, undo the lock nut on the PS pump and use a serpentine belt tool to move the pump down and remove the belt (there is a 1/2″ slot in the pump on the same side as the pulley. That said, on this car I had to loosen the lock nut plus two other bolts holding the pump to it’s bracket. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get in there to show you guys where the bolts are positioned, and the lighting was bad and I actually couldn’t see 2 out of the 3 (and I did the other two by feel only).
Not pictured is the ac/alternator belt removal. This one is self explanatory (and easy). Use a serp belt tool to engage into the 3/8″ slot on the belt auto-tensioner. Pull back and remove the belt.
Next, we start removing hoses. First, we remove the upper radiator hose (which is probably the easiest to access:
Next, we fish the Alternator out:
Due to the way the alternator is mounted, extra leverage is necessary to remove the mounting bolts and bracket:
And the alternator is free:
Next comes the removal of two heater hoses from the back of the firewall:
These hoses are incredibly difficult to access. To further illustrate, here is their location in relation to the rest of the engine bay:
Ultimately, I needed to remove the ignition coil and spark plug wires from the valve cover to get better access. Note: I have the longest reach needle nose pliers and the rad hose pliers sets from HF. Even using these tools, I could barely access these hose clamps (spring type).
This is how I ended up removing that stubborn hose:
Yes, those are garden shears…
The timing belt replacement for this car is on par with most headgasket jobs (even then, access to fasteners may make this job even more difficult than an “easy headgasket replacement… More pictures and captions in the next post.
Thank you for reading!
After disconnecting a few more hoses (because I’m replacing all but one of my cooling system hoses), it’s time to remove the disconnect two engine mounts. Since I’m working on jack stands, I supported the weight of the engine with wooden blocks and a 12 ton bottle jack from HF.
I didn’t really like the idea of using wooden blocks under the jack to give it more lift, but it’s what I had to do (and I didn’t have another option at the time). Anyway, this jack was surprisingly effective at making small adjustments to engine position (which had to change frequently to reach fasteners) without loosing control and having the engine drop too low.
Now that the engine is free from a mount or two, it’s time to drop it down a little and attach the crankshaft pulley.
Note the puller I’m using. This puller is the one recommended for this particular engine, and the above visual shows why: the puller has a low enough profile that it can squeeze in below the cross member. Also worth noting, this pulley is an unkeyed interference fit (meaning it’s position does not matter when re-installing). Also, it is extremely important to use the insert tool specified by the shop manual. The extensions included with the puller itself are either too long or two short to do the job.
This is where I goofed a little:
When removing the crank pulley, I didn’t lower the car enough for the balance to clear, and the puller insert got stuck in between the now free pulley and the crankshaft…
Nothing a little hammer time couldn’t fix:
More pics continuing later!
Update:
I’ve been troubleshooting why my car won’t idle, and I think I got my exhaust cam off by a tooth. My short term fuel trim is consistently reading -25%, so I think that’s a fairly good indication. As it so happens, my cameraman’s sd card filled up once I got to taking the timing covers off, so this gives me an opportunity to get some of those hard-to-document shots. I’m really not looking forward to taking it all apart (again), but at least I know how to get it apart/back together more easily.
I’ll update again sometime tomorrow.
Ok, everything is now running as it should. Turns out I didn’t take into account the angle of the vehicle (and the upwards slope of my driveway) when I was setting my cam timing. The good news is that the cam timing being off didn’t cause any damage (other than to my pride). After taking it apart for a third time, all is good (and she runs much better now than she did before the replacement.
Unfortunately I didn’t get any more pictures getting closer to the timing belt because I was really focused on finding out why it wouldn’t run right (it is my daily driver after all). I will take some pictures of the old parts (some of which looked like they were on the verge of failure). Expect those pictures in a day or two.
[quote=”tbonedude89″ post=106766]Update:
I’ve been troubleshooting why my car won’t idle, and I think I got my exhaust cam off by a tooth. My short term fuel trim is consistently reading -25%, so I think that’s a fairly good indication. As it so happens, my cameraman’s sd card filled up once I got to taking the timing covers off, so this gives me an opportunity to get some of those hard-to-document shots. I’m really not looking forward to taking it all apart (again), but at least I know how to get it apart/back together more easily.
I’ll update again sometime tomorrow.[/quote]
A good rule of thumb is once you have the belt or chain on start the car for a few seconds to make sure that it runs and you don’t get any CELs. Usually an indication of timing being off. Even if there’s no coolant or water pump you just idle it long enough to confirm that it runs properly.
I would have done that, but I had to remove one engine mount and remove the through bolt for another. I didn’t want to risk the engine falling off of the bottle jack while running and cause damage to anything (especially if it ran rough). If all the mounts could have stayed in place, I would have started it after getting the belt on.
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