I've gotten a lot of benefit from this forum, here's my pay-ahead. 1991 Camry V6 Gen 2

The only DIY I found reference to was a dead link; hopefully mine willlast a couple of years for those who need it. The intent of thisposting is to fill in some of those details that are left out or areunclear in the factory service manual section on this procedure. Idon't have a Haynes so can't comment on the info there.

Background: I had a wobbly crank pulley awhile back that concerned me: http://toyotanation.com/forum/t157429.html
A couple of months later I had a catastophic timing belt failure: http://toyotanation.com/forum/t177992.html I'm not sure they're related, but it was the right time to fix both problems.

Here's my first peek at the problem. Notice the steel cables that wereonce the structural part of the timing belt. Peeking behind the timingbelt cover was pretty straight forward. The job took less than 5minutes and everything was accessible from the top of the car with verylittle muss or fuss. It took sockets from 10mm to 14mm to access thisarea.




Here's what was left of the timing belt after I fished it out from around all the pulleys, idlers, and other parts:




Nice!....right?

To top it off, the crankshaft pulley was toast. My working hypothesisis that the wrong kind of pulley puller was used the last time the TBwas changed. AutoZone, true the their business model, gave me ajaw-type puller to do the job...absolutely the WRONG tool. Since minewas toast I didn't really care. The Harbor Freight website had a photoof the right kind of gear puller. I took it in to Checker and borrowedthe proper puller to take with me to the junkyard to harvest a newcrankshaft pulley.

I absolutely LOVE my local PickNPull yard. The gals they have runningthe checkout stations are completely clueless. Their priceboard saysthat harmonic balancers are $19.99. Misc pulleys are 12.99. Of course,my part was NOT a harmonic balancer and I got out of there for a few $$less than most other yards that employ people that know what the hellthey're looking at. Anyway, it's always nice to see a pretty femaleface at the junkyard, flirt a bit, and practice my Spanish.

Oh, yeah, here's a photo of the f'd up Gerry-rigged setup I had to maketo get the pulley off the donor car. Seems the fender skirt was in theway and I couldn't turn the pulley. See the note about the siezedengine below.




Getting the pulley off my Camry was a treat of a job. I ended up usingallen wrenches and a chunk of rebar to keep the pulley from turning.




Thank goodness I found a Lexus at the junkyard that had a siezed engineand didn't have to worry about that shizzle there in the cold and wetweather today.

I opted for a GatorBack Goodyear timing belt. The Punk at the CheckerAuto parts near my work gave me a belt for a 4-cyl engine...so I had totake the oily, greasy belt back to him and ask him to stick it wayup.....on the shelf where he got it. Armed with the right length belt Idove into installing the new belt.

Setting the cranshaft gear and the cam gears to the right position wasfairly straight forward, after reading the pertinent posts here.Getting the F'in belt onto all the right gears was NOT!

Long story short: remove the tensioner! it gives you ALMOST enoughslack to get the belt on the cam gears. Ultimately, I had to put thebelt on the foward camshaft gear and under the top idler, and then puta few notches of the belt on the back cam gear and start turning thedamned thing with a 17mm wrench, hoping it would all slide onto thatback gear in the right orientation.

After numerous failed attempts, 6 skinned knuckles, a slew of swearwords that made my non-English speaking Pakistani father-in-law blush,and a lot of persistence...I got the whole damned thing lined up rightand the belt in the proper place. I expected to be able to turn themain pulley a couple of times and see the yellow marks on the belt allline up with the important places on the camshafts again...it AIN'Tgonna happen unless you have the patience to turn it about 72 timesaround. The important thing is to watch the dimples in the camshaftpulleys and crank pulley and make sure the all line up every 2 turns orso, regardless of what the yellow marks on the belt are telling you. Ifyou're REALLY anal, count the notches between the right and left cammarks on the belt and verify the same number of notches after a fewturns of the main pulley.

Feelings of bliss and an approach to Nirvana overwhelm one when youhave the guts to put the key in the ignition and crank...AND the F'nthing actually starts.



I never did get part of the passenger side engine mount out of the car.The part that actually bolts onto the block wouldn't come out of thespace between the block and inner fender. I tried moving the enginewith respect to the car a couple of times with no noticeable benefit.Ultimately I chose to work around it and leave it loose in there.

As with any DIY posted on the internet, your mileage may vary...andprobably will. Hopefully you wont' have to waste an entire weekendfiguring all this shizzle out for yourself.

The only consolation is that my next project, assuming I can get thiscursed Camry out of my garage, is a 1990 Audi V8 Quattro that won'tstart. The LORD only knows what can possibly be wrong with that beast.But if the Gods *are* crazy, I should have quite the toy to play withthe rest of this dreary Salt Lake City Winter.

Feel free to email questions or comments, punch holes in my method, orcut me into your lottery winnings if you find this usefull.

Cheeers,

Dave