Timing Belt for Dummies writeup (2 Viewers)

[scottm]

103,000 miles on this ’03 UZJ100

I worked at a fairly leisurely pace, about five hours on Saturday and ten on Sunday. Lots of interruptions for Halloween decorating and festivities and yardwork and such.

Parts I replaced:
- Thermostat with gasket and O-ring
- Waterpump with gasket and O-ring
- Upper and lower radiator hoses
- Timing belt
- (2) timing belt idler pulleys
- Timing belt tensioner
- Serpentine belt
- (2) cam seals
- Crank front seal
- Air filter
- Windshield wiper refills

Things I didn’t replace, some people have recommended:
- Serpentine belt idlers
- Fan clutch
- Various smaller hoses
- Coolant (mine was fairly new so I reused)

Tools and such to have on hand:
- A big wrench, for the crank pulley. I have a ¾” drive wrench and put a cheater on that.
- Something to hold the crank still while turning the bolt holding it on. I have a home-made pulley tool, there are tools you can buy, or maybe there’s another way to hold the crank.
- Pulley puller.
- Gasket maker, see below
- Thread locking compound. I like medium-strength in a stick, tried gel this time, nice. I also use a lot of low-strength.
- Dielectric grease for lubing O-rings and hoses.
- Seal puller, I use a wood screw but don’t really recommend it.
- Plastic scraper, I save old key cards from hotels or credit cards, and I made up a set of Delrin scrapers from scraps at work.
- Throttle body cleaner and toothbrush. You need a new toothbrush anyway. Don’t use carb cleaner.
- Medium-size flat file without the handle – see below.
- A clean tub that fits under the radiator to catch as much coolant as possible. My coolant was fairly new, and I reused it, otherwise catch it for disposal and to keep your floor spotless (yeah good luck with that). I caught maybe three gallons.
- Many rolls of paper towels
- Cardboard that you will cut to cover the back of the radiator. It will save your radiator and your knuckles many times.
- 10mm Allen wrench socket

Here’s a bunch of parts from cDan/Beno, I didn’t end up using some of them, like the valve cover gaskets, PCV valve, starter contacts and plunger, extra oil filters. I’ll get to them some other weekend. This job was about the timing belt and things I can only do while I’m in there. About $600 for all these parts.

Get some Ziplock bags to put bolts in, and a marker to label them. Put towels or blankets over the fenders and grill/radiator, that makes for a cleaner job and no scratches. I like to put a toolbox drawer insert on the engine while I’m working to keep tools, fasteners, and such in. Read this FAQ, lots of good tips: https://forum.ih8mud.com/100-series-cruisers/148025-90k-starter-replacement-job.html

 

[scottm]

The first things to go are the engine cover and intake plumbing. The cover is obvious, four bolts/nuts. When possible, put the fasteners back in the holes or on the studs so you don’t lose them.

The intake plumbing is held on by a couple bolts, the clips around the air cleaner box, the wire connector near the air cleaner box, and the hose clamp at the engine intake, and some smaller hoses you'll encounter. A 10mm socket takes it all off.

 

[scottm]

Next remove the skid plate under the radiator, and drain the radiator. Open the white petcock and get a tiny stream of coolant, or pop off the lower radiator hose and get coolant all over the place quickly. I chose the latter. Remove the top and bottom hoses from the radiator.

Now the fan and fan shroud come out. Remove the thermostat, catch the coolant if you can. Four nuts hold the fan onto the pulley. I used a box end wrench and hit it with a hammer to loosen the nuts. Maybe someone has a better method? Remove the coolant reservoir, two bolts on the sides and it slides up and out. Remove the fan shroud. How the heck? I nearly set fire to the truck at this point. I figured out that I could rotate the shroud, passenger side up, slowly. I broke off a mounting ear on top hitting the AC hose, successfully superglued it, and broke it off again on install.

 

[scottm]

Cut your cardboard, cover the back of the radiator. Loosen the serpentine belt by putting a wrench on the idler/tensioner bolt and turning left. That’s the bolt in the center of the pulley, and it’s left-hand threaded, so it won’t loosen.

 

[scottm]

There’s a rubber and steel tube running from the oil filter housing to the intake. If you unhook it from the intake and swivel it down into your catch bucket, you can drain the coolant from the block. You can see I pulled the thermostat housing first and there’s coolant all over the engine. The coolant visible in the rectangular intake for the waterpump is no longer visible after draining. Pull the thermostat housing after draining the block using this hose, opposite of what I did. Perhaps there’s an easier way to drain the block, but this seems to work and you have to pull that hose anyway.

 

[scottm]

Remove the drivers’ side timing belt cover. There are wires in your way, I like to unclip rather than cut these, and reuse. The cam sensor is inside the driver’s-side cover, two bolts (one stud-bolt) remove it.

 

[scottm]

Passenger side cover and tensioner are pretty simple. Unbolt the power steering pump through the pulley, move it aside, and unbolt the alternator and pull it off the mounting bolt.

 

[scottm]

The fan bracket has two bolts down by the oil filter, PITA. I was pretty frustrated by these. Here’s the wrench on the upper bolt, view from center and view looking straight down:

 

[scottm]

And here’s the lower bolt, from under the truck. It’s just above the oil filter, easiest to remove the oil filter.
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Here’s the fan bracket removed, with the offending bolts in it. I’m not sure if the longer one goes on top or bottom. I didn't jack up the truck or remove the tire, just slid under and wrenched.
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[scottm]

This is the bracket that needs to be bent up to get the fan bracket off, with triangular plug on it. Big thanks to Spressoman for that tip on his writeup.

 

[scottm]

Now to remove the crank pulley. I’ve used the bump start on many cars, trying to get more sophisticated and safe and not damage things so much. So I have this home-made crank pulley holder. If you want to make one, this pulley has two tapped holes in it, 65mm apart, M8x1.25 thread. I simply drilled a couple holes on each side of the big hole with 65mm spacing, and I have my pulley holding tool. The two wider spaced holes fit an 80 crank pulley.
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A long, perforated square cheater pipe on the ¾” drive wrench made a pretty easy job of it, just a gentle pull was enough. I rested the holder tool on a block of wood to protect the paint.
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[scottm]

If you’re going to replace the cam seals, loosen the cam pulley bolts now also, the timing belt holds the cams well. I’ve used a strap-wrench, and I’ve cut up my old timing belt to protect the pulley while holding it with a chain wrench. Lots of techniques. They should be lined up like this:

 

[scottm]

A pulley puller works well here, I could also bolt a threaded plate to my custom pulley tool, maybe next time.

 

[scottm]

Now take two bolts out and remove the timing belt tensioner to loosen the belt. Slip off the belt, remove the cam and crank pulleys.

 

[scottm]

My hillbilly cam seal remover. When I used this on my crank seal the seal popped out while I was pulling on the screw to see if it was in deep enough, I wasn’t ready, was pulling at an angle, and the screw scratched the crank slightly. I polished it out, but I still feel like an idiot for not getting a cheap seal puller for this job.

 

[scottm]

Clean the intake while you’re in here, top and bottom, both sides of the butterfly plate.

 

[scottm]

This timing belt idler uses a big Allen bolt, the only one I encountered. 10mm.

 

[scottm]

Unbolt the water pump and pry it loose. Clean up the sealing surface with a plastic scraper, and I like to use a flat file to make sure there are no high spots on the surface. Keep the file laid across the entire surface to make sure it stays flat, and rub it around feeling/looking for places it seems to cut in or drag. Corrosion or buildup or stuck bits of gasket will leave high spots. A large sharpening stone can do the same thing, but you don’t really need to get this surface that polished. The tube above the waterpump should get a new O-ring.

The FSM mentions lubing the O-ring with soapy water, I don’t like that, it’s likely to dry out before you get the waterpump on there. I really like dielectric grease for O-rings, it’s recommended for O-rings, I’ve found nothing better. It used to be really expensive, but now most parts stores have it in tubes pretty cheap. It’s also the best thing for lubing coolant hoses before slipping them in place, might make them easier to remove some day.

 

[scottm]

Now put everything back together. You did put the fasteners in marked bags and take lots of pics right? Put thread-locker on all the threaded fasteners. It’s not so much to keep them from loosening when properly torqued, it’s because you aren’t going to properly torque them and this is insurance. And it keeps you from over-torquing fasteners to make sure they don’t loosen. And, really important in the salt belt, threadlocker fills the threads with a plastic that keeps water and corrosion out. So I use still use low-strength threadlocker if I’m not really worried about fasteners coming loose, but want to protect them from corrosion.

These helping hand clamps keep the timing belt on the cam. If you temporarily install the sensor ring and crank pulley, it will keep the timing belt on the lower timing pulley, then you have to remove them to get the plastic cover on. I fought with getting the timing belt on, then rotated the crank a bit and the belt just slipped on.

 

[scottm]

Before putting the serpentine belt on, the hose from oil filter to intake needs to go on. Somehow I got this wire bundle in front of the fan bracket instead of behind, had to tuck and tie it back to keep it away from the fan. The first pic is while taking it apart.