Lining up your timing belt

[dr.occa]

to help get the timing belt lined up right the first time when you tighten up the belt tensioner:

- between the 2 dimples (marked with red dots) on the cam gears there should be 13 teeth on the timing belt.

- between the dimple of the intake cam gear and the bottom middle tooth (marked with red dots) on the timing belt crank gear there should be 52 teeth on the timing belt.

the bottom middle tooth of the timing belt crank gear should be the tooth directly below and opposite the cutout for the woodruff/keyway.

when you tighten up the tensioner, everything should line up to TDC. you should still make sure all your timing marks line up as prescribed in the FSM.

[JOMON-C]

nice clean detailed info.

[bt20v]

I jsut did mine...the car had 171k on the clock and everything was factory toyota...the belt had streched real real bad...I got lucky it didnt break.

Probably one of the easiest timing belts i have done pretty straight forward too

[McKenney]

Don't forget the timing tabs on the backing plate to line up the cams. And the woodruff key in the crank should be directly vertical...

[dr.occa]

Remember this is just to get the belt on properly so when you apply tension ALL the timing marks are lined up.

I'll bet that if you just line the timing belt teeth up (the way I described above), you don't even have to have all the markings on the gears lined up with the marks on the cam gear cover or oil pump. As soon as you apply the tension, everything would line right up automatically as you rotate everything to check timing markings.

Make sense?

[bt20v]

i didnt see this before we did mine and just went with the marks and tightned the tensioner. then spun the motor 360 and the marks were still lined up. the car is soooo much smoother now.