Timing Belt

[G and C Johnstone]

I changed out the original timing belt on my 1996 ES300. My $65 part was wearing Toyota part numbers and could have cost as much as $170 at Repco but was bought off auction site; Trademe.

Because the car has only done 130 thousand kilometers I have not changed anything other than the belt. The belt appeared to be in good nick. Highly glazed tooth surface and only very slight evidence of de-laminating on its outside edge in a few places. Not enough to leave debris. Nothing on the way in or out screamed, "Replace me".

I used a piece of pipe to extend the socket handle to the floor and the starter motor to undo the harmonic balancer bolt and a two legged puller dragging on two of the bolts borrowed from the removal of the engine stabilizer mount to remove the pulley. I used a same size but a throw away bolt in the same place in the pulley to jam a pinch bar against the socket when torquing back up the retaining bolt at the end of the reassembly.

A useful trick was to place a nylon tie around the rear camshaft gear and the new belt to hold them in mesh and alignment [belt to cam]. The rear camshaft seemed to want to move off the timing mark but with the tie on it was easy to thread the belt to the other points and recover the rear alignment last after working around; crank, water pump, cam, idler. I had enough thread on the tensioner retaining bolts to not bother compressing it before refitting.

The whole job took me less than four hours without the need for special tools. I also knew that the local garage would be helpful and not antagonistic should I fail at some point and call on their services to recover from a disaster. This could have happened as early as the removal of the balancer or as late in the job as its replacement if I was not satisfied with its re-tightening. The local garage is very competent and has mobile service facilities for agricultural machinery so they would have delighted in such a call.

Comparing the two belts it is possible that the old one could have retarded the rear cam shaft very slightly due to the greater internal diameter.

I would like to be able to do the full house kit at the end of the next ten years. The car might have 250 thousand on it by then.