I just read this whole thread, and right from the beginning, when I read what Kyle did, I understood that he did it wrong.Originally Posted by SoTxVx
In my case, I already had the TSB read and re-read in my head. I absolutely did not rotate the crankshaft or the pulleys AFTER the original belt was removed. I'm going to outline everything in my how-to (provided I successfully finish) but here is a quick breakdown:
After I opened up the timing belt compartment by removing the three covers I rotated the engine by hand with my breaker bar. This was where I first got confused. There are reference marks on the camshaft pulleys and on the engine housing. The passenger side reference mark is at 10 o'clock while the driver's side pulley is at 2 o'clock. While cranking the engine over by hand before the original belt was removed, every complete rotation yielded the same results, the pulleys lined up with the reference mark on the engine housing at the same time, every time. What confused me, was that I *thought* the old mark on the belt needed to line up as well. But, after talking to a mech friend of mine and reading and reading, I came to the conclusion that the marks on the belt are for REINSTALLATION only. I hope I am not wrong here, but I rotated the engine by hand (prior to removing the original belt) damn near 15 times, and the lines on the belt NEVER lined up with the marks on the pulleys and the housing together.
So basically, you need to line up the marks on the pulleys with the marks on the housing, ignoring the marks on the original belt. At this point the mark on the crankshaft pulley will be at 3 o'clock. Now you are ready to remove the belt. Loosening the bolts on the tensioner, the belt will come loose, and the camshaft pulleys will SPRING to the 12 o'clock position. This was confusion point #2 for me. Again, after talking to my mech friend it all started to make sense. So now, you have the old belt off. All you do at this point, is put the new belt on, starting with the passenger side camshaft pulley, aligning the white line on the belt with the notch on the pulley, and hold it in place with a binder clip. Then, do the same with the driver's side pulley. To do this however, you need to have a wrench (and a helper if possible) to pull the passenger side pulley BACK to the 10 o'clock position. You may need to play a little with the driver's side pulley as well. So once you get all three marks lined up correctly on the camshaft pulleys, you will need a helper to pull the camshaft pulleys back to their reference marks and hold there so you can get a little slack in the belt. Then you can crawl under the VX and carefully align the dotted lines on the new belt with the notch at the 9 o'clock position (180 degrees from TDC) on the camshaft pulley. Once you have the belt on all three pulleys, the tensioner will need to be replaced. To do this, you need to wrench again on the tensioner pulley to give yourself enough room to put the new tensioner in place, bolt it down and pull the pin. At this point, you can rotate the engine by hand again, the marks on the camshaft pulleys should align with the marks on the engine housing together, at every full revolution. You will also notice that the white lines on the timing belt do not align the same after every revolution, just like the original belt, but as long as the pulleys consistently line up together, you are good.
***To anyone reading this, I am not done yet and the above statement is speculative!
Bart
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