Diesel Timing belt change

[davidd]

thanks mate, gives me a bit more confidence. bit like working round the shroud on an old kingswood. pain in the butt, but do-able

[BigfootBushy]

Originally Posted by double black offroad

We sourced it ourselves. A genuine belt is $450!!!!!! Ours is $120.

I was quoted $617.79 + gst by my local dealer. That is only the belt.

Bill, can you get the tensioner and water pump aswell.

[davidd]

Originally Posted by MightyMouse

The radiator and intercooler etc etc all stay in place - you don't disturb any of the engines "sytems" or loose any oil / coolant

The washer bottle, electrical,and mechanical fans, the fan shroud, airbox, "fan belt" and harmonic damper need to come off to give you access to the two piece plastic timing cover.

YOu need to unplug the air mass sensor and temperature sensor on the airbox, the washer bottle pump and the electric fan ( which is buried in the shroud )

Once the shroud and fans are off there's actually heaps of space ( about the same as the standard petrol engined installation ) to work.

A mirror on a stick is usefull for viewing the alignment of the common rail high pressure pump and crank timing marks without too much head twisting - but not essential. I didn't use one, but would have if it was handy.

i understand the shroud has 4 studs holing it in place, two up top and two on the bottom. on old holdens with a full shroud we used to take it out and cut in half, so there was a top and bottom half, then re-install it. next time we had to work on it, we just pulled the top half off and everything else was easy. doyou reckon it's possible to split the shroud on the jk in a similar way to make it easier next time, or is it not worth it.

[MightyMouse]

I don't believe the assembly is suffieicntly rigid to be cut in half as per your suggestion, but i trimmed about 5mm off the shrouds bottom which made it MUCH easier to slide up past the mechanical fan. Personallly i'd do this first next time.

[MightyMouse]

Well this has generated lots of interest ( obviously the prices of getting the belt done at a dealer makes more people than me unhappy... ) So i'll add some more information that migh help as people seem to want to do this.

A little info on the timing marks......

The crankshaft belt sprocket is marked on its side with an oval detent which aligns with a mark on the engine. This mark on the engine is at the 3 oclock position.

The injection pump has a dimple on its face that aligns with a mark on the front of the engine at about the 4:30 position

The top cam pulley is not marked in any way, you need to use a paint pen and mark it when the crank and injection pumps are alligned with their respective marks. There's a protuding edge on the timing cover that makes a good "pointer"

The engine may have to be turned over with a socket on the crank bolt to get it to the point where the crank and injection pump alignments marks are both alligned at the same time as they are differerent sizes and come into alignment every couple of engine revs if you follow. Once these are correct then you can mark the cam sprocket as described.

If you can't identify the marks on the crank and injection then don't remove the belt. its not difficult but if you've never done anything like this before its probably not for you or get a mate who does understand a little about timing marks etc to give you a hand

The tension side of the belt is on the passengers side, so when your fitting the new one make sure there is no slack on that side and the belts "teeth" are engaging the sprockets.

The tensioner side of course doesn't matter as this slack will be taken up later.

[MightyMouse]

Actually a service manual is available on another thread... this contains the CRD engine ( which the original / flakey downloaded one didn't ) so anyone who's looking at doing this now has access to the full set of Jeep instructions.

Note the special tools are NOT REQUIRED ( if your carefull ) and you dont need to replace the seal over the exhaust cam as your not fitting the special cam locking tool that requires its removal. You also don't need to remove the cam position sensor as the manual suggests.

All will be clear when you read the relevant sections

So now there's no excuse if your mechanically inclined.

[BigfootBushy]

MightyMouse,

Thanks for the info mate.

I have been planing on changing mine myself and was ready to have to nut out how to do it without the special service tools. Now you've done the nutting out for me it will be a lot quicker. I am planning on pulling the radiator and the intercooler when I do. Only because I want to clean them.