So I spent yesterday afternoon, evening and night with Deadlydave installing the timing belt. Boy were there some lessons learned yesterday.
#1 read the instructions all the way through.
#2 don't drop the tape you are marking the parts and bolts with in the container holding the coolant you drained
#3 If you do drop your tape, don't find the nearest roll of duct tape to mark the parts and bolts
#4 Coronas make good fire extinguishers.
The dis-assembly of the front of the car went smoothly and everything came out as planned with no surprises, and didn't take that long, except we had to make another run to the parts store. My AC belt had begun to split down the middle, in two places, so we went to the store and replaced both belts. Then we got to removing the timing belt itself. We marked the shit out of the cams and crank, so we knew where everything was when we had to put the new belt on. The belt came of easy enough and the drivers side cams jumped a bit. No big deal we marked the shit out of them, right? Wrong, we couldnt get our marks to line up after we replaced the water pump and pulleys. Not to mention the Gates kit I purchase came with 2 identical pulleys, they mispacked the box. We inspected the installed pulley (that we didnt get a replacement for) and it seemed fine so we reused it.
Now we get to lining up the cams and crank. Once we realized our marks were no good we did a lil more reading and found the factory marks. They were easier to line up but not to keep in place, while installing the timing belt. We tried unsuccessfully for a looong time to get them to stay in place whilst installing the belt. We almost had it installed a few times and something would jump out of place. Close enough was not good enough. Then we made some emergency phone calls. Then we went back to work. We finally used a C clamp and a piece of wood to hold the upper driver side cam in place. This allowed us to snake the belt around. Right after we got the belt on I found a side note in the instructions. "
After you have the belt installed, install the last pulley", which happened to be the one that was not supplied in the kit. This bit of information would have saved us a few hours, some skin, and brain cells.
We rechecked the timing markings and they were still fine. Time to put her back together. Now it is getting dark and we are a little frustrated and tired, but we pushed through it. So we started putting everything back together and it was going smoothly and getting darker by the minute. Reading what we labeled everything was a bit difficult but manageable. Once everything was reinstalled I started to put the battery back in. I tightened the Pos side then tightened the Neg. I gave the Pos side a lil tug and it wiggled. So went to snug it down a bit more.
Long story short the wrench slipped out of my hand a landed on the battery tie down.
Within a few seconds the "J" bolt holding the battery down was bright red.
Dave knocked the wrench off and onto the ground then I noticed the battery cover was on fire
. The closest thing to grab was a bottle or 2 of Corona Light
. Yup that put the fire out. But know I am short a ratchet, and committed alcohol abuse.
Once everything was back together, and fires extinguished, we refilled the radiator and crossed our fingers. It fired up with no problems. We burped the coolant system and let it run for about 30+ minutes. No extra noises, shimmies, or explosions. I called it a job well done and a huge learning experience. We started around noon and I finally sat back on my couch around 11pm.
I drove to FMCC and back today and it ran fine. Only one problem, I do have a small coolant leak on the bottom side, probably from a hose not being fully seated. I will try to find that tomorrow.
Much thanks to Dave for spending his Saturday afternoon, evening and night with me. I couldn't have done it without him. Everyone should applaud him. He did earn a Kartboy shift knob out of it.
Hopefully the dp will arrive this week and I get the exhaust work done during the week.
