having changed my timing belt 4 times now, I can say it is not as difficult
as it seems at first. As long as you remove the upper engine mount bracket
and use the floor jack under the engine properly, it's fairly easy. You
remove the fender well liner for the front half of the fender well, and then
use the jack for alternating the work between the upper half and lower half
operations. It seems as though the steps to take to do the belt change and
tensioning operations require an upper area access and then a lower area
access, and back and forth constantly. So, it's up with the jack, tweak
something, lower the jack tweak the next thing, raise the jack... and so on.
Having the proper tools helps immensely. You need a 8 mm square bent wrench
(like an allen wrench), and a 8 mm square socket that can be attached to
your ratchet, a socket-style allen wrench, and a long handle allen wrench.
You need straight access to the front bottom tensioner and angled access to
the rear, upper tensioner. When you work on the front tensioner, you drop
the engine off the jack, which gets the engine lower than with the motor
mount installed. When you work on the upper, rear tensioner, you raise the
engine as high as it will go. You need to hold tension with an 8mm tool,
while tightening the hold down bolt with the allen wrench, and the best way
that I found was with the tools I described. You also need cam sprocket
locks, as well as a pretty good idea of what the proper tension feels like,
unless you happen to own a Seemtronic belt tension guage.
I concur with a price of around US$170 for the job, not much more. If the
engine has high miles and you cannot ascertain that the water pump has been
changed, then add changing that to the price. You also need the engine
dropped for that job. If the engine has more than 150K miles on it, opt for
spending the money on changing both tensioners, as when one of these freezes
up with no warning, you may kiss all 16 valves good bye, provided that the
belt is fairly fresh and it does not break when the tensioner freezes, but
rather, the cogs of the timing belt shear off. This ensures that all cams
continue spinning out of time with the pistons, thereby crushing all valves
bent! Spending $150 more for tensioners makes plenty of sense as opposed to
$1000 and up for a 16-valve, 8-16 guide replacement plus gaskets plus
exhaust flange sealing kit.
Mike Taylor, Nashua, NH, USA