Starting fluid

Daniel Forest said:
but I guess a change was due...
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Ya think? ;)
It took me 2 hours to remove, includind jacking the car and removing the Wheel. I choosed to remove the alternator instead of removing the crankshaft nut, to be able to remove the alternator belt.
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It won’t take you anywhere near as long next time. You still have the challenge of getting the new belt on over the tensioner, which is something of a rite of passage... the first time I was weeping with frustration and ready to drop a match into the gas tank and walk away... and then when it finally goes on you’ll feel exactly how it goes and ever after it’ll take 15 seconds after the belt is positioned on the cam sprocket. Check some of our older threads for hints and tips, and don’t hesitate to call us for help.

You don’t need to remove the alternator or the crankshaft nut to replace the belt, and I prefer to leave the wheel on. I cut the alternator belt to get it off because it’s cheap enough that that I’d rather use a new one than spend time getting the old one off. If you jack the passenger-side rear wheel an inch off the ground (think dog at a fire hydrant) and leave the car in gear then turning the wheel with a socket on a lug bolt is the easiest way of turning the motor (although others will have their own favorite way).
But strong chances are this was my problem from the beginning!
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A good bet, and certainly one of those things that has to be fixed before you can even consider anything else that may be wrong - troubleshooting an engine before the cam timing is right is a waste of time.
 
EricH said:
It won’t take you anywhere near as long next time. You still have the challenge of getting the new belt on over the tensioner, which is something of a rite of passage... the first time I was weeping with frustration and ready to drop a match into the gas tank and walk away... and then when it finally goes on you’ll feel exactly how it goes and ever after it’ll take 15 seconds after the belt is positioned on the cam sprocket. QUOTE]

Thanks Eric, You are always helpful but this isn't my first timing belt change. Since the car is 50 feet away from my tools in the garage and all the guards, hoses and ducting are still there, I tought 2 hours is a great time. I could have make it faster by cutting the t-belt, but then, it would have taken me a lot more time to install the new one since I would have to remove what I didn't first.

And i know, the removal is the easiest part. Putting it back to finally figure that you are one or two teeth too far is always frustrating since it is so hard to put on the cam Wheel.

EricH said:
You don’t need to remove the alternator or the crankshaft nut to replace the belt, and I prefer to leave the wheel on.
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The alternator/water pump belt is in front of the timing belt on the 1987 model and was still too tight to be removed, even with the alternator in the highest position (bumping on the water pump). To be able to remove it, I needed to remove the alternator or to remove the crank pulley. Alternator was the easiest and I checked a lot of threads on the subject. Many others made the same choice.

EricH said:
A good bet, and certainly one of those things that has to be fixed before you can even consider anything else that may be wrong - troubleshooting an engine before the cam timing is right is a waste of time.
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Agree on that! :D
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I found removing the crank pulley made the whole job much easier. I bought an electric impact driver which made the removal quite easy. This was a non ac car, removing the crank pulley also allowed removal of the alternator belt.

My biggest issue was around getting and keeping the tensioner held back. Once I did that it was all pretty easy. It provided enough slack once fully back to make the install of the timing belt very easy. I used a variety of open end wrenches stacked up. I will check to see if I have a pic.

Glad you found it, leaving the car fallow for all these years is unfortunate.
 
An easy way to deal with the tensioner is to loosen the nut, and then take a long flat blade screwdriver to use as a lever to pull back the spring loaded plunger, then just re-tighten the nut. When everything is ready, just loosen the nut, rotate the engine by hand to make sure the belt is well seated, and re-tighten the nut.
 
kmead said:
I found removing the crank pulley made the whole job much easier. I bought an electric impact driver which made the removal quite easy. This was a non ac car, removing the crank pulley also allowed removal of the alternator belt.

My biggest issue was around getting and keeping the tensioner held back. Once I did that it was all pretty easy. It provided enough slack once fully back to make the install of the timing belt very easy. I used a variety of open end wrenches stacked up. I will check to see if I have a pic.....
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Last time I did this I used Karl's open end wrenches idea and it worked nicely. I keep forgetting to pick up a socket for the crank nut....anyone recall what size it is.....otherwise I would have removed the crank pulley to save futzing with the alternator and the tins that surround the timing belt's crank cog. I too have an electric impact gun.
 
Dan,
Crank nut is 38 mm.

I just finished the job. Timing belt was easy. I took the precaution of checking if piston #1 was at TDC.Refitting the alternator was a little harder... go figure. Then ignition timing took me another hour. I was keeping pointing the rotor to piston #1 instead of at the position of piston #1 in the distributor cap... Clost to 180 degrees wrong. Then when I figured it out, the car started for the first time in1.5 year. Made some fine tuning with the cap and now I'm cleaning all the greasy parts before refitting them.
 
EricH said:
But it’s supposed to be firing #4 not #1 - did you mean to say #4 the second time in that sentence?
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Yes, you are right. I checked if piston #1 was at TDC when setting the timing belt, but I pointed the rotor to #4 when it was time to do the ignition timing.
 
Congrats on getting it back up and running. If you go back and look at the original thread, the first two posters nailed it.

On mine which had nearly the same behavior, I initially thought it was the ignition when in reality it was the timing belt.
 
kmead said:
Congrats on getting it back up and running. If you go back and look at the original thread, the first two posters nailed it.

On mine which had nearly the same behavior, I initially thought it was the ignition when in reality it was the timing belt.
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I'm just a little stubborn. :rolleyes:
 
Both of my X's had the belt off by a few teeth when I first got them. Plus lots of other issues. But they still ran. Amazing.
 
I know that stubbornness. :D

Actually it comes down to ones assumptions. On mine despite it being a very old timing belt, I assumed from the manner of how my car stopped running that it was an electrical fault. With a timing belt, I assumed I would hear something odd when it failed. Instead the engine just stopped running with no drama or predication something was wrong. At 25mph it just went from its normal sounds in 3rd gear at 25mph to nothing.

This false assumption prevents us from getting to the actual root cause.

The engine stopped, there was no noise or drama so it must be electrical. Compound that with some things we can observe, a single spark from the distributor when I first start turning the engine over and nothing after that. This reinforced my false assumption that there was an ignition fault, further testing suggested the problem lay in the distributor.

In my case the false assumption I had made was finally made clear when I marked the timing belt at the viewport at the top of timing cover and it hadn’t moved despite different amounts of time cranking.

Once we have made a false assumption we continue to see evidence as reinforcing the false assumption despite it pointing to the reality of the problem.

This is generally known as confirmation bias.

It tells you a great deal about why our current politics, racism and conspiracy theories are the way they are today.

Anyway, thus why it is important to look at a problem based on all the possibilities, not just what you think the problem is...
 
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