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I suggest to read this post all the way through before you start.
VERY IMPORTANT TIP #1: One thing to bear in mind from the get-go, there is alot of confusion sometimes about lining up the new belt marks with the dots on all the pulleys, as shown in STEP 9 below. (So thats why i put this paragraph first - listen to me now and believe me later, as hanz and franz would say). Lining up the marks is not all that hard to do BUT it means the difference between a smooth belt install or a frustrating debacle for you.
So, once you reach this step where you install the new belt, remember: Install the belt using the timing belt marks printed on it by the manufacturer. Line up all the dots and marks on the pulleys, along with the white strips on the new belt. Double check them. Install belt tensioner (photo 5).
And once you have done all this, forget the belt markings, because they no longer are a reference to anything you will be doing from this point forward.
(Because - Once your new belt is on and the crank is turned one or more turns - only the marks on the pulleys must line up, with their corresponding timing marks on the engine!!!...so once the belt is installed, and the crankshaft turned, these marks on the belt are irrelevant - they wont be lining up with ANYthing now! And this is completely normal and how they are supposed to be. I'll explain more on this later.)
Photos are below their captions -
1. PARTS: Here are the parts.
Lefto to right: Water pump $75, Idler and belt $62, #1 idler $78, power steering and alternator belts $18 (not shown).
Everything but #1 idler (the part with two holes) was bought on-line. The parts all arrived in less than a week. #1 idler is a dealer only part. (BTW it is held onto the engine block by a 10mm female hex bolt. The hex socket for removing it is shown in the upper right corner.) When forced to buy parts at the dealer, always ask for a discount, say you are with a shop and you might get it.
Parts
2. Remove RF wheel. Remove plastic wheel well cover. (Do yourself a favor and clean the engine before you begin all this.) Now remove the alternator and power steering belts, and the upper mounting brackets/engine mounts. The next step is to Remove the crankshaft pulley bolt (22 mm socket).
(By the way - Haynes manual says to remove ALL the spark plugs at this point. The reason is to make the crank easier to turn. I'm lazy and did not do this, i only removed the 3 front spark plugs. In retrospect this job would have been easier if i had removed all 6 plugs - it would have made lining up the pulleys much easier not fighting the engine compression. But the rear ones are very hard to remove so i just skipped this step.)
REMOVE CRANK PULLEY BOLT: I pounded this bolt with my electric impact wrench but to no avail. Finally i used the breaker-bar-and-starter bump method, which worked like a charm.
To do this, you need the 22 mm socket, and a breaker bar. Place the socket on the crank bolt and brace the breaker bar against a solid part of the car. Recconect battery and blip the starter with the key. DON'T engage the starter as if you were trying to start the car! Just a blip or two, and now the bolt should be loose! Don't worry about getting the bolt back on tight right now - we'll get to that later.
Attempting to remove crankshaft pulley bolt with electric impact gun - failing
3. REMOVE CRANK PULLEY: The Haynes manual says "the pulley should come off with hand pressure". This is a fiction, it is stuck on there like nobody's business and you are most likely goingto need a puller of some kind. I used a steering wheel puller to yank the pulley off.
Dont use a 2 or 3 jawed puller for removing the pulley. If you do, the pulley might be ruined and you will have to buy a new one, and you surely don't want to do that if you can avoid it.
With the crank pulley off, you can now remove the upper and lower timing belt covers, they are held on by a whole bunch of 10 mm bolts.
Steering wheel puller used to remove pulley; the threaded holes in the crankshaft pulley were used
4. LINE UP PULLEY DOT MARKS TO ENGINE MARKS (3 MARKS IN ALL): Reinstall the crankshaft pulley bolt, finger tight only. Then put the wrench on (22 mm remember) and crank the engine by hand. (Don't worry about getting the crank pulley bolt out again - a quick yank counterclockwise ought to work.)
(As a general rule, turn the crank bolt clockwise only, although you can get away with moving it just a little counterclockwise for adjustments).
Line up the dot on the crankshaft GEAR (not the one on the crankshaft snout! that's for later.
Align the dot on the stamped steel gear , see the tiny arrows in the picture).
This mark lines up with the mark on the oil pump.
IMPORTANT: The marks on the camshaft pulleys MUST line up too (refer to the picture at step 12 below). If they don't line up you might be 180 degrees off on the crank and this is NOT what you want. And if they dont all line up it means you need to rotate the crank just one more complete turn with the 22 mm to make ALL 3 marks line up now.
VERY IMPORTANT: If you bought a timing belt from somebody other than Toyota, your new belt may have come with NO marks on it for aligning! I bought one non-toyota belt that was like this and decided to keep it (i also have a Solara V6) and just went down and bought a Toyota belt that has the marks. But if your belt has no alignment stripes and you can't just go and buy the toyota one now, you should get some white out or water based paint and mark your old belt right now that everything is aligned. This way you can use the old belt for a guide and mark the new one yourself by carefully counting the teeth in between and/or laying the new belt atop the old one.
Tiny arrows in photo show the mark on the stamped gear properly aligned with the mark on the engine
5. REMOVE OLD BELT: To remove the timing belt, first unbolt the tensioner. (It is held by two 12mm bolts, one long, one short). It is under a lot of tension, so loosen the bolts evenly and in increments.
If yours look different than the one in the photo: note that on older V6's, the bolts may be located coming from underneath the tensioner, and not the front as per the one in the photo. (As shown in the photo below. By the way, this photo is out of sequence. It is NOT possible to have the hex key in while removing the tensioner)
Removing/installing tensioner - hex pulley has been stuck in thru the corresponding holes to hold the tensioner pin back for installation. Its under hella pressure so you will definitely need a vise
6. Now slide the old belt off the pulleys and remove it. if you are not changing your water pump now you can skip ahead to step 8 or 9 (depending on if you are changing the idlers too or only the belt).
CHANGING WATER PUMP: At this point i chose to change the water pump, even though it worked fine. To do this, the camshaft pulleys have to come off. And then #3 timing belt cover. The pulley nuts are 17mm. Not only are they tight, they are very hard to hold in place to undo the bolt! (If you change timing belts for a living you might want to consider investing in the tools shown at the bottom of the post.)
Toyota says NOT to use timing belt tension to remove these bolts (because if you do, there's a good chance you can stretch and ruin the belt) but i did anyway. I used another 17 mm socket to hold the other camshaft pulley as i loosened the pulley bolt - it was the old belt, after all. (BTW sorry if this part is a bit late - but this is easier to do BEFORE you remove the tensioner; or the belt will probably just skip over the cam gear as you try to remove those bolts.)
Now you can remove the 10mm bolts holding the #3 timing belt cover and pull it out of the way.
7. The water pump is held on by a bunch of 12 mm nuts and bolts. The Haynes manual says you must remove one of the protruding long studs, (as shown in the photo below) in order to remove the water pump. They're wrong again. Just pull out the water pump, wiggle the forward end loose off the stud and then the water pump will come out.
The factory gasket is also in the photo...it is a metal and rubber gasket and uses no sealer. I reused my old one. Sure hope it doesn't leak.
Water pump removed - note the OEM gasket, it is made of stamped steel and rubber
8. CHANGE IDLER PULLEY ASSEMBLYS: upper (14mm socket) and lower (10 mm hex socket). Be sure to use loctite blue on the bolts here.
I changed my old idler pulleys even though they still worked - because I wanted to be done with all of this for another 90,000 miles. But if this is the first time the timing belt has been changed on this engine, and you are broke at the moment, you can probably get by with the old idler pulleys if you must. But you should at least check the old ones before you put everything back together. Spin the idlers by hand and listen carefully - they must spin freely with no binding and no noise whatsoever. If they seem ok you could take a chance and re-use them if you have to.
But if it is your second timing belt change on this engine, i'd change them for sure.
9. INSTALL NEW BELT: Now put the new belt on, and then align the marks on the belt with the dots on the pulleys. Toyota says put the belt on in this order:
1 -First put it over the crankshaft gear and align the dot on the spline with the mark on the belt (photo below). I held the belt in place here with a zip tie around the belt -although you could use coat hanger wire too.
2 -Then place the belt under the water pump pulley.
3 - Then around the front-most camshaft pulley, and align the mark.
4 - Then place it under the top idler and then over the left camshaft pulley.
5 - Finally snake it over the lower idler pulley.
You will need a 17 mm socket to align the camshaft pulley marks and they will fight you all the way too, because of valve spring pressure. Here's some tips to make it easier -
Tip #2, i used vice grips, well padded with a rag, to gently hold the belt onto the front camshaft pulley. Be SURE to not forget to remove the vice grips once you install the tensioner!
Tip#3, remember if the marks on the belt aren't clear, there are 59 teeth between the camshaft pulleys.
Below shows the timing belt matching mark (the little dot) on the crankshaft snout. Tip #4, : this is NOT the same mark as the crankshaft alignment mark, for putting the engine at TDC! That one is on the stamped gear behind it, they are two seperate marks, as you surely will have noticed by now.
Tip #5, like i said, once you have the timing belt marks aligned on the crankshaft and the camshaft pulleys, these marks on the belt are no longer any kind of a reference - they are for belt installation only. Don't forget that.
Factory dimple on crankshaft snout has been lined up with the mark on the new timing belt.
10. INSTALL BELT TENSIONER: To reinstall the tensioner, which is the first thing you will do after you install the new belt, use the following procedure. You first must crush the pin in the tensioner back. You will need a vise to do this, it is under ALOT of pressure. (A C-clamp might conceivably work if that is all you have but i didn't try this, i just used a vise.) Then shove in a hex key through a small hole in the pin.
When you have the marks lined up on the new belt, bolt the tensioner back in place and yank out the hex key to release the tensioner pin. I levered the hex key out with vice grips and a screwdriver handle placed under ditto for leverage.
Timing belt tensioner ready to be bolted back on. It is shown after the pin has been pushed down with a vise and a hex wrench through the holes inserted to hold the pin down
11. Now rotate the crankshaft twice (clockwise only). If you did everything right the marks (ON THE PULLEYS ONLY! ...will align).
(To get it right the first time and not have to fix this shit all over again, use the following procedure.)
A. Turn the crank over twice to check that the timing marks align, as Toyota says you must do. How? Read on.
B. All the marks on the PULLEYS MUST align. Check the three, the crankshaft pulley and the camshaft pulleys. Double check to make sure the little dot marks on them align with the points Toyota made on the engine itself! You can just forget all about the little white stripes on the timing belt marks; at this point they will no longer align with anything, unless the belt had to be removed and reinstalled again. )
12. Another photo out of sequence. The marks you used on your very first part of the belt install. (I highlighted the marks with white out. They are hard to see if you don't do this.)
More important, note the little white hash mark on the stamped notch on #3 stamped steel timing belt cover (upper red arrow). At this point the camshaft pulley dot (lower red arrow) MUST ALIGN PERFECTLY with the other hash mark (top arrow again). If the pulley marks do not align perfectly, you should do it all again until they do.
(Forget all about the white stripe on the belt. I guarantee you it doesnt align with anything right now and what you are seeing is not the same as whats in the photo.) This is one of the critical steps to do the job right otherwise i wouldn't repeat things.
Not quite perfectly aligned but you get the idea. At initial installation, all three marks must align. IMPORTANT: Once you crank the engine over twice for the double check, the white stripe on the belt will NOT align - only the pulley mark and engine marks will align at that point!
13. TEST YOUR WORK: Now the marks are lining up, you should test your work before you put it back together. Reinstall your spark plugs now (i always use anti sieze on these threads, its a mistake not to). Reconnect the battery and start the engine. Don't bother reinstalling the alternator belt right now, there's no need to! You can run the engine off the battery alone for 30 seconds or a minute without ill effect. And this is more than long enough to tell you what you want to know, which is: did i do everything right??
The engine ought to idle like it did before you started. Once you know it starts and runs right, you can shut it off and finish putting everything else back on.
If it runs poorly i.e. worse than it did when you started - realign the timing marks again and carefully check that the belt is really lined up right after all. You could be one or two teeth off, and this is enough to make the engine run wrong.
14. Important note on reassembly. Put the "RH engine mounting bracket" parts back on BEFORE you reinstall the timing belt covers. The mount is really two pieces called the same thing, per the drawing below. The edge of the timing belt covers go OVER the mount - there is a flange molded onto them for this. So if you put the covers on first you will just have to do it again, because the engine mount goes back on first. The parts in question are shown below, red
Put the "mounting bracket" parts back on before you try to install the upper and lower t-belt covers
14. Reinstall the power steering and A/C belts (and now is a good time to change them too). Reinstall everything else that had to come off including the inner fender cover etc.
Conclusion
I thought i had prepared for this job but i was wrong - i had done many timing belts before and never had a problem and i was sure i could do it this time too. But these were always on 4 cylinders with only one camshaft pulley. In short, i was well prepared in tools and parts but short on some basic knowledge...BTW If i would have locked the camshaft pulleys in place with these tools below, it can make it a little easier.
http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/vehic...elt-tools.html
Here is the final update: I wanna tell the truth even if it makes me look like a big idiot. Cause this site is all about knowledge and good or bad here's the truth, and don't make my mistakes unless you like paying too much money for some reason.
I have to say one confession, i got confused about the timing marks on the belt vs the timing marks on the pulleys because i am stupid.
I had no problem aligning the marks initially but when i turned it the mandatory two crankshaft revolutions, the marks never aligned again. This was because in my ignorance, i thought the belt marks had to line up too! I didnt realize it at the time, but only the marks on the pulleys have to line up and once the belt is installed, the marks on the belt are irrelevant! But i was actually CORRECT the whole time and only thought i was screwing up. DOH!!!. So i took it to a shop and they charged me $270 to finish it, but at least they were honest and told me what i had done. So if i help someone with this that will make me feel better (although not $270 worth of better unfortunately).
I got it back from the shop and the guy said the check engine light was on so he checked that out too. One of the spark plug coils was disconnected! That's all! It look like it was connected, but wasnt, wasnt on all the way. Yes, im a tard.
He said i did a good job putting the belt, the marks were lined up right after all. It runs great, silky smooth, i figure i'm good for another 90k unless some other idiot smash into me first lol
VERY IMPORTANT TIP #1: One thing to bear in mind from the get-go, there is alot of confusion sometimes about lining up the new belt marks with the dots on all the pulleys, as shown in STEP 9 below. (So thats why i put this paragraph first - listen to me now and believe me later, as hanz and franz would say). Lining up the marks is not all that hard to do BUT it means the difference between a smooth belt install or a frustrating debacle for you.
So, once you reach this step where you install the new belt, remember: Install the belt using the timing belt marks printed on it by the manufacturer. Line up all the dots and marks on the pulleys, along with the white strips on the new belt. Double check them. Install belt tensioner (photo 5).
And once you have done all this, forget the belt markings, because they no longer are a reference to anything you will be doing from this point forward.
(Because - Once your new belt is on and the crank is turned one or more turns - only the marks on the pulleys must line up, with their corresponding timing marks on the engine!!!...so once the belt is installed, and the crankshaft turned, these marks on the belt are irrelevant - they wont be lining up with ANYthing now! And this is completely normal and how they are supposed to be. I'll explain more on this later.)
Photos are below their captions -
1. PARTS: Here are the parts.
Lefto to right: Water pump $75, Idler and belt $62, #1 idler $78, power steering and alternator belts $18 (not shown).
Everything but #1 idler (the part with two holes) was bought on-line. The parts all arrived in less than a week. #1 idler is a dealer only part. (BTW it is held onto the engine block by a 10mm female hex bolt. The hex socket for removing it is shown in the upper right corner.) When forced to buy parts at the dealer, always ask for a discount, say you are with a shop and you might get it.
Parts
2. Remove RF wheel. Remove plastic wheel well cover. (Do yourself a favor and clean the engine before you begin all this.) Now remove the alternator and power steering belts, and the upper mounting brackets/engine mounts. The next step is to Remove the crankshaft pulley bolt (22 mm socket).
(By the way - Haynes manual says to remove ALL the spark plugs at this point. The reason is to make the crank easier to turn. I'm lazy and did not do this, i only removed the 3 front spark plugs. In retrospect this job would have been easier if i had removed all 6 plugs - it would have made lining up the pulleys much easier not fighting the engine compression. But the rear ones are very hard to remove so i just skipped this step.)
REMOVE CRANK PULLEY BOLT: I pounded this bolt with my electric impact wrench but to no avail. Finally i used the breaker-bar-and-starter bump method, which worked like a charm.
To do this, you need the 22 mm socket, and a breaker bar. Place the socket on the crank bolt and brace the breaker bar against a solid part of the car. Recconect battery and blip the starter with the key. DON'T engage the starter as if you were trying to start the car! Just a blip or two, and now the bolt should be loose! Don't worry about getting the bolt back on tight right now - we'll get to that later.
Attempting to remove crankshaft pulley bolt with electric impact gun - failing
3. REMOVE CRANK PULLEY: The Haynes manual says "the pulley should come off with hand pressure". This is a fiction, it is stuck on there like nobody's business and you are most likely goingto need a puller of some kind. I used a steering wheel puller to yank the pulley off.
Dont use a 2 or 3 jawed puller for removing the pulley. If you do, the pulley might be ruined and you will have to buy a new one, and you surely don't want to do that if you can avoid it.
With the crank pulley off, you can now remove the upper and lower timing belt covers, they are held on by a whole bunch of 10 mm bolts.
Steering wheel puller used to remove pulley; the threaded holes in the crankshaft pulley were used
4. LINE UP PULLEY DOT MARKS TO ENGINE MARKS (3 MARKS IN ALL): Reinstall the crankshaft pulley bolt, finger tight only. Then put the wrench on (22 mm remember) and crank the engine by hand. (Don't worry about getting the crank pulley bolt out again - a quick yank counterclockwise ought to work.)
(As a general rule, turn the crank bolt clockwise only, although you can get away with moving it just a little counterclockwise for adjustments).
Line up the dot on the crankshaft GEAR (not the one on the crankshaft snout! that's for later.
Align the dot on the stamped steel gear , see the tiny arrows in the picture).
This mark lines up with the mark on the oil pump.
IMPORTANT: The marks on the camshaft pulleys MUST line up too (refer to the picture at step 12 below). If they don't line up you might be 180 degrees off on the crank and this is NOT what you want. And if they dont all line up it means you need to rotate the crank just one more complete turn with the 22 mm to make ALL 3 marks line up now.
VERY IMPORTANT: If you bought a timing belt from somebody other than Toyota, your new belt may have come with NO marks on it for aligning! I bought one non-toyota belt that was like this and decided to keep it (i also have a Solara V6) and just went down and bought a Toyota belt that has the marks. But if your belt has no alignment stripes and you can't just go and buy the toyota one now, you should get some white out or water based paint and mark your old belt right now that everything is aligned. This way you can use the old belt for a guide and mark the new one yourself by carefully counting the teeth in between and/or laying the new belt atop the old one.
Tiny arrows in photo show the mark on the stamped gear properly aligned with the mark on the engine
5. REMOVE OLD BELT: To remove the timing belt, first unbolt the tensioner. (It is held by two 12mm bolts, one long, one short). It is under a lot of tension, so loosen the bolts evenly and in increments.
If yours look different than the one in the photo: note that on older V6's, the bolts may be located coming from underneath the tensioner, and not the front as per the one in the photo. (As shown in the photo below. By the way, this photo is out of sequence. It is NOT possible to have the hex key in while removing the tensioner)
Removing/installing tensioner - hex pulley has been stuck in thru the corresponding holes to hold the tensioner pin back for installation. Its under hella pressure so you will definitely need a vise
6. Now slide the old belt off the pulleys and remove it. if you are not changing your water pump now you can skip ahead to step 8 or 9 (depending on if you are changing the idlers too or only the belt).
CHANGING WATER PUMP: At this point i chose to change the water pump, even though it worked fine. To do this, the camshaft pulleys have to come off. And then #3 timing belt cover. The pulley nuts are 17mm. Not only are they tight, they are very hard to hold in place to undo the bolt! (If you change timing belts for a living you might want to consider investing in the tools shown at the bottom of the post.)
Toyota says NOT to use timing belt tension to remove these bolts (because if you do, there's a good chance you can stretch and ruin the belt) but i did anyway. I used another 17 mm socket to hold the other camshaft pulley as i loosened the pulley bolt - it was the old belt, after all. (BTW sorry if this part is a bit late - but this is easier to do BEFORE you remove the tensioner; or the belt will probably just skip over the cam gear as you try to remove those bolts.)
Now you can remove the 10mm bolts holding the #3 timing belt cover and pull it out of the way.
7. The water pump is held on by a bunch of 12 mm nuts and bolts. The Haynes manual says you must remove one of the protruding long studs, (as shown in the photo below) in order to remove the water pump. They're wrong again. Just pull out the water pump, wiggle the forward end loose off the stud and then the water pump will come out.
The factory gasket is also in the photo...it is a metal and rubber gasket and uses no sealer. I reused my old one. Sure hope it doesn't leak.
Water pump removed - note the OEM gasket, it is made of stamped steel and rubber
8. CHANGE IDLER PULLEY ASSEMBLYS: upper (14mm socket) and lower (10 mm hex socket). Be sure to use loctite blue on the bolts here.
I changed my old idler pulleys even though they still worked - because I wanted to be done with all of this for another 90,000 miles. But if this is the first time the timing belt has been changed on this engine, and you are broke at the moment, you can probably get by with the old idler pulleys if you must. But you should at least check the old ones before you put everything back together. Spin the idlers by hand and listen carefully - they must spin freely with no binding and no noise whatsoever. If they seem ok you could take a chance and re-use them if you have to.
But if it is your second timing belt change on this engine, i'd change them for sure.
9. INSTALL NEW BELT: Now put the new belt on, and then align the marks on the belt with the dots on the pulleys. Toyota says put the belt on in this order:
1 -First put it over the crankshaft gear and align the dot on the spline with the mark on the belt (photo below). I held the belt in place here with a zip tie around the belt -although you could use coat hanger wire too.
2 -Then place the belt under the water pump pulley.
3 - Then around the front-most camshaft pulley, and align the mark.
4 - Then place it under the top idler and then over the left camshaft pulley.
5 - Finally snake it over the lower idler pulley.
You will need a 17 mm socket to align the camshaft pulley marks and they will fight you all the way too, because of valve spring pressure. Here's some tips to make it easier -
Tip #2, i used vice grips, well padded with a rag, to gently hold the belt onto the front camshaft pulley. Be SURE to not forget to remove the vice grips once you install the tensioner!
Tip#3, remember if the marks on the belt aren't clear, there are 59 teeth between the camshaft pulleys.
Below shows the timing belt matching mark (the little dot) on the crankshaft snout. Tip #4, : this is NOT the same mark as the crankshaft alignment mark, for putting the engine at TDC! That one is on the stamped gear behind it, they are two seperate marks, as you surely will have noticed by now.
Tip #5, like i said, once you have the timing belt marks aligned on the crankshaft and the camshaft pulleys, these marks on the belt are no longer any kind of a reference - they are for belt installation only. Don't forget that.
Factory dimple on crankshaft snout has been lined up with the mark on the new timing belt.
10. INSTALL BELT TENSIONER: To reinstall the tensioner, which is the first thing you will do after you install the new belt, use the following procedure. You first must crush the pin in the tensioner back. You will need a vise to do this, it is under ALOT of pressure. (A C-clamp might conceivably work if that is all you have but i didn't try this, i just used a vise.) Then shove in a hex key through a small hole in the pin.
When you have the marks lined up on the new belt, bolt the tensioner back in place and yank out the hex key to release the tensioner pin. I levered the hex key out with vice grips and a screwdriver handle placed under ditto for leverage.
Timing belt tensioner ready to be bolted back on. It is shown after the pin has been pushed down with a vise and a hex wrench through the holes inserted to hold the pin down
11. Now rotate the crankshaft twice (clockwise only). If you did everything right the marks (ON THE PULLEYS ONLY! ...will align).
(To get it right the first time and not have to fix this shit all over again, use the following procedure.)
A. Turn the crank over twice to check that the timing marks align, as Toyota says you must do. How? Read on.
B. All the marks on the PULLEYS MUST align. Check the three, the crankshaft pulley and the camshaft pulleys. Double check to make sure the little dot marks on them align with the points Toyota made on the engine itself! You can just forget all about the little white stripes on the timing belt marks; at this point they will no longer align with anything, unless the belt had to be removed and reinstalled again. )
12. Another photo out of sequence. The marks you used on your very first part of the belt install. (I highlighted the marks with white out. They are hard to see if you don't do this.)
More important, note the little white hash mark on the stamped notch on #3 stamped steel timing belt cover (upper red arrow). At this point the camshaft pulley dot (lower red arrow) MUST ALIGN PERFECTLY with the other hash mark (top arrow again). If the pulley marks do not align perfectly, you should do it all again until they do.
(Forget all about the white stripe on the belt. I guarantee you it doesnt align with anything right now and what you are seeing is not the same as whats in the photo.) This is one of the critical steps to do the job right otherwise i wouldn't repeat things.
Not quite perfectly aligned but you get the idea. At initial installation, all three marks must align. IMPORTANT: Once you crank the engine over twice for the double check, the white stripe on the belt will NOT align - only the pulley mark and engine marks will align at that point!
13. TEST YOUR WORK: Now the marks are lining up, you should test your work before you put it back together. Reinstall your spark plugs now (i always use anti sieze on these threads, its a mistake not to). Reconnect the battery and start the engine. Don't bother reinstalling the alternator belt right now, there's no need to! You can run the engine off the battery alone for 30 seconds or a minute without ill effect. And this is more than long enough to tell you what you want to know, which is: did i do everything right??
The engine ought to idle like it did before you started. Once you know it starts and runs right, you can shut it off and finish putting everything else back on.
If it runs poorly i.e. worse than it did when you started - realign the timing marks again and carefully check that the belt is really lined up right after all. You could be one or two teeth off, and this is enough to make the engine run wrong.
14. Important note on reassembly. Put the "RH engine mounting bracket" parts back on BEFORE you reinstall the timing belt covers. The mount is really two pieces called the same thing, per the drawing below. The edge of the timing belt covers go OVER the mount - there is a flange molded onto them for this. So if you put the covers on first you will just have to do it again, because the engine mount goes back on first. The parts in question are shown below, red
Put the "mounting bracket" parts back on before you try to install the upper and lower t-belt covers
14. Reinstall the power steering and A/C belts (and now is a good time to change them too). Reinstall everything else that had to come off including the inner fender cover etc.
Conclusion
I thought i had prepared for this job but i was wrong - i had done many timing belts before and never had a problem and i was sure i could do it this time too. But these were always on 4 cylinders with only one camshaft pulley. In short, i was well prepared in tools and parts but short on some basic knowledge...BTW If i would have locked the camshaft pulleys in place with these tools below, it can make it a little easier.
http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/vehic...elt-tools.html
Here is the final update: I wanna tell the truth even if it makes me look like a big idiot. Cause this site is all about knowledge and good or bad here's the truth, and don't make my mistakes unless you like paying too much money for some reason.
I have to say one confession, i got confused about the timing marks on the belt vs the timing marks on the pulleys because i am stupid.
I had no problem aligning the marks initially but when i turned it the mandatory two crankshaft revolutions, the marks never aligned again. This was because in my ignorance, i thought the belt marks had to line up too! I didnt realize it at the time, but only the marks on the pulleys have to line up and once the belt is installed, the marks on the belt are irrelevant! But i was actually CORRECT the whole time and only thought i was screwing up. DOH!!!. So i took it to a shop and they charged me $270 to finish it, but at least they were honest and told me what i had done. So if i help someone with this that will make me feel better (although not $270 worth of better unfortunately). I got it back from the shop and the guy said the check engine light was on so he checked that out too. One of the spark plug coils was disconnected! That's all! It look like it was connected, but wasnt, wasnt on all the way. Yes, im a tard.
He said i did a good job putting the belt, the marks were lined up right after all. It runs great, silky smooth, i figure i'm good for another 90k unless some other idiot smash into me first lol
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