I couldn't wait any longer and started the timing belt, water pump, cam seal job yesterday. The current belt had 120,000 miles on it and my daughter is going back to school in a week. I'd rather repair it here than down at school. Word of warning, this is not for the faint of heart. Most all the bolts were rusted in place, I broke the AC compressor tensioner bolt and had a 4 hour wrestling match trying to get the TB tensioner off because the Ac bracket didn't want to cooperate. The AC bracket was a bear.
Getting back to a prior post, I pulled the T-stat and sure enough the jiggler was at 12 o'clock. That would explain the 205* running temp. SO that will be corrected.
:frusty:
Okay, here is where I need so help. How do you remove the cam gears? Mine seem like they are welded in place. The bolt will not budge. I used the old timing belt and a monkey wrench to secure the cam gear and a breaker bar and pulled until I nearly had a hernia. I have to get these off to change the seals. What's the secret to breaking the bolts free?
Edit.
I finally was able to break the cam gear bolt free by wrapping the old belt around the cam so that the teeth of the gear were filled and then continued to wrap the belt over itself and hooked the loop on the coolant stub. Then with my floor jack handle on the breaker bar, it finally released. Did the reverse to install it using a torque wrench. Not ideal but it worked.
This may help, I found the TB was too tight to slip it into place with the idler pulleys installed. What I did was install the tensioner idler pulley (lower) and left the top one off. My belt had the marks to line up the cams. Using clamps, I held the belt on the cams. Then lined up the left cam to its mark and positioned the belt on the water pump, tensioner and crank. Then installed the top idler pulley. Far less stessful this way. Then turn the crank 4 revolutions to make sure the timing is still correct. Also it helped to back the crank up one tooth to get the belt on.