Special tool for Timing belt (GS 300).....
12-17-07, 06:52 AM
#1
There can only be One
Thread Starter
Special tool for Timing belt (GS 300).....
So I finally did my timing belt, MUCH thanks to Jeff for renting me is tool. I honestly don't see how in the world I would have done with WITHOUT THIS!
You know I heard the talk of supposedly this thing being on there so tight that its almost impossible to get off but I just didn't think it would be this hard.
Let me give you guys the break down and a small DIY.
I did this with my mechanic. The dude is freaking awesome. Knows his stuff. I was a bit reluctant to bring it to him since he is a VW lover
. Its my baby man, you don't take your baby to germany for a check up, lol, but he is good. He is a Toyota Tech here in Orlando, and if you need work done on your lex out in FL, let me know, I'll tell him and he will do it. Dudes got skills. Did his own Turbo rebuild on is VW sucker is putting down high 11's at the track.
We started by taking out the serpentine belt.
Easy enough, you put a wrench, turn counter clock wise and bang it comes off. Well you have to pull it off but you get the idea.
To get more clearance on the front of the car we removed the radiator fan (pictures below)
Its easy, there are 6 bolts, 3 on top 3 on the bottom. Make sure you unplug all your electrical wires first. Before you pull off the plugs, drain your radiator, we did the water pump as well. Perfect opportunity to do a drain and fill on this one. Then you take of the bolts that hold the fan and that is done.
Then you place the above tool onto that huge cylinder. The name escapes me but picture are below. Its easy enough anyway.
Everything removed:
Here is the FUN PART!
We tried everything to get this thing off several ways, all of which failed miserably. We tried a long torque wrench, where he would pull one way and I the other way, which in the end proved to be really really stupid. Reason here:
Yes what you are looking at is a BROKEN torque wrench. I did not think this was possible. Its freaking STEEL MAN! lol. That was with us pulling it STUPID HARD, for about 10 minutes till we figured out... okay we need to go to the gym or something before we do this. lol.
So my mechanic came up with an idea (brilliant even). Since we know we do not have the strength to lift the car (LOL) he wedged the long lug wrench we were using onto the frame of the car:
It was great. Now two of us can pull on the lug itself. That should we enough force right? WRONG!
So we tried getting some torque on ANOTHER wrench we had. We put the Lug Wrench onto the bolt and used a regular wrench for leverage. This is what happened:
Yes we bent a HUGE wrench as well. Its again SOLID STEEL FOLKS!
We both were pulling and pushing it did not go ANYWHERE!
You know I heard the talk of supposedly this thing being on there so tight that its almost impossible to get off but I just didn't think it would be this hard.
Let me give you guys the break down and a small DIY.
I did this with my mechanic. The dude is freaking awesome. Knows his stuff. I was a bit reluctant to bring it to him since he is a VW lover
. Its my baby man, you don't take your baby to germany for a check up, lol, but he is good. He is a Toyota Tech here in Orlando, and if you need work done on your lex out in FL, let me know, I'll tell him and he will do it. Dudes got skills. Did his own Turbo rebuild on is VW sucker is putting down high 11's at the track.We started by taking out the serpentine belt.
Easy enough, you put a wrench, turn counter clock wise and bang it comes off. Well you have to pull it off but you get the idea.
To get more clearance on the front of the car we removed the radiator fan (pictures below)
Its easy, there are 6 bolts, 3 on top 3 on the bottom. Make sure you unplug all your electrical wires first. Before you pull off the plugs, drain your radiator, we did the water pump as well. Perfect opportunity to do a drain and fill on this one. Then you take of the bolts that hold the fan and that is done.
Then you place the above tool onto that huge cylinder. The name escapes me but picture are below. Its easy enough anyway.
Everything removed:
Here is the FUN PART!
We tried everything to get this thing off several ways, all of which failed miserably. We tried a long torque wrench, where he would pull one way and I the other way, which in the end proved to be really really stupid. Reason here:
Yes what you are looking at is a BROKEN torque wrench. I did not think this was possible. Its freaking STEEL MAN! lol. That was with us pulling it STUPID HARD, for about 10 minutes till we figured out... okay we need to go to the gym or something before we do this. lol.
So my mechanic came up with an idea (brilliant even). Since we know we do not have the strength to lift the car (LOL) he wedged the long lug wrench we were using onto the frame of the car:
It was great. Now two of us can pull on the lug itself. That should we enough force right? WRONG!
So we tried getting some torque on ANOTHER wrench we had. We put the Lug Wrench onto the bolt and used a regular wrench for leverage. This is what happened:
Yes we bent a HUGE wrench as well. Its again SOLID STEEL FOLKS!
We both were pulling and pushing it did not go ANYWHERE!
12-17-07, 07:14 AM
#3
There can only be One
Thread Starter
It was time to bring out the big guns.
We searched the backyard for a bit (since he was doing some work on his backyard) and came across a really REALLY REALLY freaking long steel tube.
It was long people.
It was hollow so it was perfect for placing it over the wrench we were pulling on for dear life and slowly turn it with very very little force. The massive amount of leverage we had now was all we needed. After seeing this I then understood at that moment how the Egyptians must have felt when they were building the pyramids. LOL.. BIG POLL, MORE TORQUE!
Here is the poll on the wrench in the car:
You just don't under stand how long this thing is by looking at the above picture and why I say that we needed a SPECIAL tool to get this thing removed.
You need to see this to fully understand....
You need to understand something.
This thing is like 20 feet long man.
It came off like butter using this thing too.
FYI he is not going to use this poll on anything in his house anymore. We decided to keep this special tool, JUST IN CASE we need it for another time. LMAFAO...
This was the little bastard that would not come off.
So we continued moving along, taking off the belt, taking off the tensioner taking off the cover and taking off the serpentine belt tensioner.
All easy stuff. They are all pretty much straight forward.
I was really worried about doing this. But this was actually not as hard as it turned out to be. Just being careful, taking your time and having a really good mechanic does help though. I wouldn't recommend this to a noob on car engines though, but if you know generally what you are doing, then go for it. Rent the tool from Jeff and do it man.
Here is everything removed:
Well not everything, we still have to remove the water pump which in the picture above is on the left next to the alternator, but I forgot to take picture of that removal.
But again its common sense removal.
There are bolts that hold it in place and they are straight forward, take them off, take off the pump to the water temp gauge (??? forgot the name) and put the new one in with the new gasket.
Putting everything back was the really careful part. Always remember to put all your bolts back onto the part you just removed so that you do not loose them.
When putting on the belt, there are other DIY's that took pictures of the process. I forgot to do so. But its not difficult just something you need to be careful with. BEFORE YOU REMOVE the belt we made sure that the crank was turned clock wise so that the marking on the cam gears were facing UP and the Crank slot was also facing up. MAKE SURE THESE THING DO NOT SPIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VERY IMPORTANT. YOU MUST MAKE SURE OF THAT. You need to make sure that the cam gear goes back to the UP POSITION or where the little slots are in the UP POSITION. its critical in doing so. When I do this again probably in the summer I will try and update this thread with the proper way to place this back on.
You then slide the belt onto the gears bottom first and then the two top ones.
The tensioner gear we placed last so that we didn't have the gears move up top.
Again I need to go back and do this again and give a better write up. But there is another on here that is just as detailed.
Ohh and FYI, when putting on some of these bolts, if I were to do this again, which I probably will, I would go out and get new bolts for some areas, reason being, that these bolts become brittle and break from the heat. I had 1 bolt break on me when removing the water pump. Luckily it did not break bad enough to where I needed to go and try and remove it YET, but eventually I will have to. Just not yet.
OHH and one other thing, we never changed the crank seal gasket or the came gear gaskets. It wasn't leaking at all so we left it like that. I KNOW I KNOW we should have but it was getting mad late and I needed my car.
We'll probably do it in the summer when we have more daylight to work with.
We searched the backyard for a bit (since he was doing some work on his backyard) and came across a really REALLY REALLY freaking long steel tube.
It was long people.
It was hollow so it was perfect for placing it over the wrench we were pulling on for dear life and slowly turn it with very very little force. The massive amount of leverage we had now was all we needed. After seeing this I then understood at that moment how the Egyptians must have felt when they were building the pyramids. LOL.. BIG POLL, MORE TORQUE!
Here is the poll on the wrench in the car:
You just don't under stand how long this thing is by looking at the above picture and why I say that we needed a SPECIAL tool to get this thing removed.
You need to see this to fully understand....
You need to understand something.
This thing is like 20 feet long man.
It came off like butter using this thing too.
FYI he is not going to use this poll on anything in his house anymore. We decided to keep this special tool, JUST IN CASE we need it for another time. LMAFAO...
This was the little bastard that would not come off.
So we continued moving along, taking off the belt, taking off the tensioner taking off the cover and taking off the serpentine belt tensioner.
All easy stuff. They are all pretty much straight forward.
I was really worried about doing this. But this was actually not as hard as it turned out to be. Just being careful, taking your time and having a really good mechanic does help though. I wouldn't recommend this to a noob on car engines though, but if you know generally what you are doing, then go for it. Rent the tool from Jeff and do it man.
Here is everything removed:
Well not everything, we still have to remove the water pump which in the picture above is on the left next to the alternator, but I forgot to take picture of that removal.
But again its common sense removal.
There are bolts that hold it in place and they are straight forward, take them off, take off the pump to the water temp gauge (??? forgot the name) and put the new one in with the new gasket.
Putting everything back was the really careful part. Always remember to put all your bolts back onto the part you just removed so that you do not loose them.
When putting on the belt, there are other DIY's that took pictures of the process. I forgot to do so. But its not difficult just something you need to be careful with. BEFORE YOU REMOVE the belt we made sure that the crank was turned clock wise so that the marking on the cam gears were facing UP and the Crank slot was also facing up. MAKE SURE THESE THING DO NOT SPIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VERY IMPORTANT. YOU MUST MAKE SURE OF THAT. You need to make sure that the cam gear goes back to the UP POSITION or where the little slots are in the UP POSITION. its critical in doing so. When I do this again probably in the summer I will try and update this thread with the proper way to place this back on.
You then slide the belt onto the gears bottom first and then the two top ones.
The tensioner gear we placed last so that we didn't have the gears move up top.
Again I need to go back and do this again and give a better write up. But there is another on here that is just as detailed.
Ohh and FYI, when putting on some of these bolts, if I were to do this again, which I probably will, I would go out and get new bolts for some areas, reason being, that these bolts become brittle and break from the heat. I had 1 bolt break on me when removing the water pump. Luckily it did not break bad enough to where I needed to go and try and remove it YET, but eventually I will have to. Just not yet.
OHH and one other thing, we never changed the crank seal gasket or the came gear gaskets. It wasn't leaking at all so we left it like that. I KNOW I KNOW we should have but it was getting mad late and I needed my car.
We'll probably do it in the summer when we have more daylight to work with.
Last edited by cpone; 12-17-07 at 07:21 AM.
12-17-07, 11:28 PM
#4
lol...good to see that the tool helped you out. I know for sure I would of never gotten that damned bolt off if I didn't have the tool. I tried everything in the book with no sucess and that's why I finally broke down and bought the tool. And yes, I had to use a big long metal bar as well. I forgot to mention that to you but I see you figured it out eventually 
I managed to remove it with a 5ft bar though.
I managed to remove it with a 5ft bar though.
12-18-07, 10:15 AM
#6
wd40, and an impact gun w/ wobble head if u can get it in there.
but yeah, u want to hold the crank in place while being able to get the bolt off.
we were removing the crank pulley off a TL yesterday, the 800 ft lb torque gun wasnt even making a dent in it. with the engine out, one guy hanged on one side of the engine, while the other guy used a 3ft extension on a 2ft breaker bar and pretty much had his whole weight on it to finally break it loose.
but yeah, u want to hold the crank in place while being able to get the bolt off.
we were removing the crank pulley off a TL yesterday, the 800 ft lb torque gun wasnt even making a dent in it. with the engine out, one guy hanged on one side of the engine, while the other guy used a 3ft extension on a 2ft breaker bar and pretty much had his whole weight on it to finally break it loose.
12-18-07, 11:06 AM
#7
Nice write up cpone. I may need to contact you in the near future for some insight with my timing belt. I live in Orlando also. I am very busy most of the time so I have not had time to come out to any of the weekly meets. I also try to do everything myself since I like working on cars The GS is very accessible and the timing belt seems fairly easy other than that bolt removal. I was thinking about using the same approach you used to get it off. GREAT JOB. 
Good write up again, it is very helpful.
I have added this thread to the DIY section so I hope you don't mind.
Thanks for your help.
nsf0607
Good write up again, it is very helpful.
I have added this thread to the DIY section so I hope you don't mind.
Thanks for your help.
nsf0607
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12-18-07, 01:44 PM
#9
There can only be One
Thread Starter
I don't mind at all. Where is the DIY section 
Whenever you need help with your T-Belt let me know.
I have another right up on here showing where you can get the parts for a very good price.
Like I said above, my boy will do it for you and with you like we did if you want, he is crazy cool like that.
Contact Jeff though for that Pulley Tool, you will need it LOL. I think he has a list already.
Whenever you need help with your T-Belt let me know.
I have another right up on here showing where you can get the parts for a very good price.
Like I said above, my boy will do it for you and with you like we did if you want, he is crazy cool like that.
Contact Jeff though for that Pulley Tool, you will need it LOL. I think he has a list already.
12-18-07, 02:34 PM
#10
I don't mind at all. Where is the DIY section
Whenever you need help with your T-Belt let me know.
I have another right up on here showing where you can get the parts for a very good price.
Like I said above, my boy will do it for you and with you like we did if you want, he is crazy cool like that.
Contact Jeff though for that Pulley Tool, you will need it LOL. I think he has a list already.
Whenever you need help with your T-Belt let me know.
I have another right up on here showing where you can get the parts for a very good price.
Like I said above, my boy will do it for you and with you like we did if you want, he is crazy cool like that.
Contact Jeff though for that Pulley Tool, you will need it LOL. I think he has a list already.
There is no DIY section so to speak, but a thread that was made a sticky on the top section of the "GS - Second Generation" page. What I have done is created links to threads of DIYs I found on this site and others for each major section for the second gen GS just to help out everyone with their search:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=288923
I update it all the time so always check there first for mods you are interested in doing.
Thanks for the offer to help, I will take you up on it. I will pm you when I am ready.
Thanks again.
12-28-07, 01:03 PM
#13
There can only be One
Thread Starter
J/K
LMFAO... Should have said something man, Wringo and I would have taken you out on the town, and had some drinks or something.
12-28-07, 03:44 PM
#14
gte & na-t
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That was nice i always wanted to do it ,your thread is going to help me out a lot but i will probably replace one cam seal and the crank seal not touching the VVTi side lol nice
12-28-07, 05:35 PM
#15
Would of been great to finally meet Wringo, Bluelex, Lexforlife and you Mr. Cpone.. Did get the opportunity to go to Disney World, Disney Quest, Universal, Sea world. Gained 50 pounds eating good southern cooking at Cracker Barrel, Chick Fil-A and others spots.. I missed the 80 degree weather
Here is a pic of both of us there in Sunny Florida. I will return in April and start a thread then.
