Changed the timing belt and water pump, and checked valve clearances, on my '94 V6 over the weekend. The car just turned 70K miles. Everything went well EXCEPT for getting the cam pulley bolts off...they were real tight. Ended up buying a chain wrench from Harbor Freight for $20 and used a hunk of the old timing belt to protect the pulleys:
Used a 1/2" breaker bar together with the chain wrench. What the picture DOESN'T show is the 16" piece of pipe I put on the end of the breaker bar to get enough leverage to get the cam bolt off. That bolt took, I'm guessing, 200 ft/lbs to break. Same with the back bolt.
Close-up (sorry, I'm not too good at Photoshop.)
The crank bolt came out easy with that same breaker bar and a 7/8" socket using the starter bump method posted on this site. I tightened the crank bolt using the chain wrench around the crank pulley with a cut-up hunk of drive belt.
The Mitsuboshi belt came with yellow lines to line up with the crank and cam pullies. I couldn't get them lined up at first, but then I flipped the belt around the other way and everythink lined up perfectly. The cam tensioner needs A LOT of pressure to collapse. I used a big vise mounted on a board so I could keep the tensioner pointed up like the manual sez...I don't know it that's important, but I did it. The water pump was easy. I drained the front coolant block valve but coolant still came out when the pump came off. I should have drained the rear block valve too. I'm flushing the coolant out now and put a couple of feet of 1/4" tubing on each block valve to make them easier to drain. I'll leave the tubing on and tuck them away from the exhaust pipes. The idlers were fine and none of the seals - cams or crank - were leaking so I left them alone.
The rear valve cover was leaking so I took off the intake plenum and both valve covers. the valve clearances were perfect; no shim-swapping required. Not too bad a job except for the damned rear wiring harness. You'd think Toyota could have spent an extra nickle to make the right oxygen sensor wire a couple of inches longer so the harness could be pulled up higher. I used stock VC gaskets + hi-temp RTV on the cover groove and head and torqued to 12 ft/lb. I'm hoping they won't leak anymore.
Parts:- head gasket set, Eristic, from cnsautoparts (ebay): $60
- water pump, Aisin f/AutohauzAZ: $80
- timing belt, Mitsuboshi f/AutohauzAZ: $31
- drive belts, Bando, f/AutohauzAZ: $20
- spark plugs, NGK laser iridium f/Autozone: $48
- antifreeze, Zerex G-05 f/Autozone: $22
- coolant bypass hose, local Toy dealer: $11
Relocated the knock sensor too but need to run the regular gas out & fill-up with premium to see how it works. It will sure make diagnosing/replacing knock sensor problems easier in the future since they're out from underneath the intake manifold. Cleaned the intake manifold, intake chamber, throttle body, and ACIS valve with carb cleaner while I had everything apart. Replaced the coolant bypass hose underneath the intake manifold but the old one was in good shape.
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