i believe the AISIN is the OEM water pump so it should be good. i just bought a 00 GS300 and have dropped like 2k on amazon and drift motion in the last 48 hours on maintenance stuff. the information you seek is here on the forum. it is buried yes, but it IS here. good luck with the build. and yes i did buy a blue gates belt as well.

 

cool yes ill be searching alot

 

To be opinionated, unless you are running major hp numbers, an oem timing-belt/water-pump kit for $250 from eBay should do just fine. We have one sitting in a box, waiting to go in to the '98 GS4.,

We've been running oem parts (even for a factory MR2 turbo with multiple boost upgrades) for 30yrs, and oem has always been enough.

It's frequency, not the parts. Things break from time, usually... not wear.

 

Late chiming in here, but I've used Gates on both my Toyotas, my Acura, and soon on my GS. It's just peace of mind for me, I'm sure OEM is fine or it wouldn't be OEM.

 

I'm a fan of Aisin and Mitsuboshi. Came from the DSM background and gates just wasn't good stuff for them. They never got the teeth right on the belts and the cars would run differently and noisy.. maybe just a bad taste in my mouth now. But what I am posting about is, I wanted to remind anyone thinking about doing your timing belt/wp, It really is getting to be time for the harmonic damper to be replaced. I have seen many failures on aging cars due to the rubber elastomer just deteriorating and separating. I went with a Powerbond from Dayco. The dampers aren't cheap, but when they fail, the tear up many components. These cars are at that age now. So before tearing down. look at your pulleys with engine running. If you notice any wobbling at all from the damper, it's time to replace. And with engine off, even if not wobbling, if you can see with a mirror/feel the rubber protruding from the damper anywhere. It's time for it to go.

 

Gates blue has a tendency to walk on the cam gears. It's the QC they failed to do on the material when they made the mold.
OEM is perfectly fine. This was advice received from Jay Meagher, the builder at Realstreet performance.