I posted this to Reddit but thought it’d be appreciated here.

Did this maintenance over the weekend, it had been done previously at 75k and I was a little overdue for it at 192k. Old belt looked fine though, no visible indications of rips/tears.

What a pain in the ass though. My main 3 headaches were the crank bolt, the new timing belt, and the AC belt.

On the crankshaft bolt, idk if I was overtorqued after the last change or what, but I tried my M12 stubby impact, m18 mid torque, and tried the starter bump/breaker bar method. None worked, including snapping the breaker bar. Ultimately I loosened the AC condenser and was able to wedge my m18 high torque in there and that was able to break it loose but I damaged a bunch of condenser fins.

Had to buy a puller to get the harmonic balancer off along with the m8x1.25 bolts but that was expected and worked pretty well.

Timing belt—getting the new one on was a huge pita. For the life of me I could not get the new belt on properly aligned with the marks on the belt and was always one tooth off. I would get the cams aligned but then couldn’t get the crank mark aligned. Ultimately my neighbor and I got it by sliding the crank gear off, putting the belt on it, levering it back on with an extension, and then twisting the crank gear onto the keyed shaft.

Finally getting the new AC belt on was way harder than I thought it should be. It is super tight which is annoying considering it has a tensioner in the system.

Other crap I did at same time:
Water pump/tensioner/idler pulleys/thermostat/belts-all the crap that comes with the t belt kit
Replaced the radiator
Oil change (super easy with everything taken off lol)
I also pulled the power steering reservoir off to clean the screen as I had been getting some noise at low speed turning.

After putting everything back together, everything seems to be running well. Got a few interesting noises at first but most have gone away, the only one lingering is that the power steering system has some whining that seems to come and go as the air bleeds out and I continue to add fluid.

I started Thursday night, let the coolant drain overnight and worked all day Friday and Saturday. Backed out of the garage Saturday evening and did some test driving Sunday. Definitely a beast of a project for me personally, but hopefully I’m now good until almost 300k! Big thanks to all the write ups and YouTube videos out there, especially Timmy!

Glad you succeeded with this repair even though it threw you some challenges. This is the norm with doing big jobs like this for the first time. You are bound to run into obstacles but that just makes the feeling of accomplishment that much sweeter once you finish the job.

Great Job! Glad our video helped you out.

Timmy the Toolman

So many of your videos have helped me out over the years! Thank you!

As you saw, yes it is a tough job. Not the most difficult TB job I have ever done, and not the easiest. About somewhere in the middle, for me.

When something goes wrong and you don't see it, then things can go extremely bad. That's what happened to me, and the job which would have taken me about 10 hours turned into a literal 100 hour job. I think that was the point at which I vowed that I have forever retired from doing TB jobs. But I haven't really. I would do another really easy one on something like a Miata (4 hour job), but by the time the T4R I have now needs another one, I will be too old and/or it will have been sold.

For me, the worst part of the regular part of the job (not while dealing with my screwups), was the damned a/c compressor bracket. I spent about 4 hours total on those 4 or 6 bolts. And I'm sure my entire neighborhood heard all about it.

You win some, you lose some. I've done two timing belts on the 5VZ-FE and both times it wen't pretty smooth. Hardest part for me was getting one of the tensioner bolts off (the one that is normally nightmare).

I used the starter bump method on the first one, worked first try. The second time, the engine was on a stand so I just used my big M18 Fuel 1/2" impact. It blasted the crank bolt off instantly.

Glad you got it done!

And thegipper is the one who got my ass out of a sling, when I accidentally cracked my valve cover lug, found that Dorman valve covers are worthless (do not ever buy one!), could not find a new OEM one, and he sold me a used one at a very fair price. That solved one of my 2 massive oil leaks (from my mistakes). The other one was a rolled cam seal. Rolled on the bottom, so I didn't see it. Took me quite a while to trace that leak to the source. Those 2 problems are what took me 100 literal hours to solve.

I made a special spanner bar to hold the crank pulley while removing and installing the bolt. It’s basically a few chunks of flat bar bolted in a Y with bolts in the tips for the pulley holes. The end of it contacts the frame rail below the battery.

I tape a large piece of cardboard over the rad or condenser when doing this work to prevent damage.

For installing the timing belt turn the cam pulleys clockwise about 1-2 teeth off their marks. A touch more on the passenger side. Not so much they jump due to valve tension. Then install the belt with all marks on the belt positioned properly on the pulleys. The belt should be loose-ish at all points so you need to hold it in position. Then pull the pin on the tensioner and it will snug up and the timing pulleys will turn onto their marks.

No idea on the ac belt. Maybe you got the wrong belt? They’ve always fit right on when the tensioner is backed off for me.


Glad you got the job done. Frustrating when a rig fights back.

^^ I made a tool like that, too. I had to make it for my daughter's Mazda Protege5, and was extremely relieved to find that it also fit my T4R. It also came in really handy for holding the cam pulleys while I loosened/tightened their bolts. The steel blocks I welded to the bar happened to fit pretty well into the cam pulley "spokes".

For the crank pulley on my T4R, my 1/2" pneumatic impact wrench wouldn't budge the bolt, but the "bumping the starter" trick broke it loose.