Timing belt swap, how I did it.

Here's my '06 Aveo.

Get your car pulled into your work area. Mine is a 5 speed. To start with, I left it in 5th gear and set the parking brake.
I parked it with enough room to sit in front of the passenger side wheel. And get a jack on the frame just behind that wheel.

There will need to be room in front for you to work and get another jack underneath to support the oilpan when the time comes.




After removing the hubcap, I positioned the jack. (see pics)

Got the lug nuts broken loose, and then jacked the car up to get the wheel off and the car up a little bit.

I put a spare rim and wood underneath the car behind the jack cup, for saftey, incase the jack decided to loose pressure in the middle of things.






I lined the slots in the cup up with the frame seam. No damage occured, lifting here. Although I noticed the pass. door dragged very slightly on the striker when opened. Otherwise, no problems here.









Start By removing the Airbox.

You'll be able to see all the attaching screws.

Remove 3 bolts attaching it to the frame.

The Remove the intake hose clamps -see next pic.








This pic shows a handly little tool I have...Its a Battery powered Impact Driver from Hitachi.

This thing is so great for duties like this.

In this pic I have a 6mm (All fasteners are metric) socket on, removing the airhose clamps.

I removed both clamps and set the hose out of the way, back over the motor (this way you dont have to unplug any of the sensors (2).



I removed the splash shield using the 10mm nuts circled.


The red arrows below indicate 3 other screws to remove from underneath. See next pic.









You get the idea.






















Put a wrench here and give the pulley a tug as if you were trying to tighten the bolt. This loosens slack and the serpentine belt slips right off.


Once that was off and out of the way I removed the crank pulley bolt.
* Take note of any markings on the bolt, this was a handy reference for me when re-tightening this bolt.
3/4 drive socket wrench, with an extender bar.

(This extender bar is from a heavy duty floor jack. - it also serves to apply pressure to the brake pedal when wedged against the seat.
(See next pic.).



This worked great when I didnt have a helper around, and the balancer bolt kept spinning the engine around instead of tightening or loosening. Even in 5th gear.


You can remove the balancer now (it falls off, no puller required) Keep your hand on it, or it could get damaged with a fall to the floor. Its about 10lbs.







Remove the bolt (faint red circle and arrow) holding the power steering line clamp, to the alternator's top bolt.

Save the nut in a container or screw it back onto the threads.
As long as its off, you'll be able to move the line as needed now.









Getting close to removing the motor mount, I took some time to support the motor safely.
As seen here, I used a 2 ton shop jack
with a shirt as an extra measure of protection against damaging the oilpan ( not too likely, but better safe than sorry)

I raised the jack until it just contacted the pan. Be sure not to go too high and start lifting the car by its engine.
-that would not be too good





With the airbox removed and the engine safely supported its time to remove the motor mount.

Your going to remove the 3 bolts around the part that says 'R2'
and the other 3 bolts in a row just above it in the pic.










Here, I took the top cover off before I actually removed the motor mount.
Either way is fine. There are 3 bolts holding it on.
There recessed but not to hard to find or reach with things out of the way.

Speaking of getting things out of the way, there's a rubber hose that needs to be simply unclipped from the top cover. I'm sure you'll see it.

Now were getting close, there's the famed timing belt.

In this pic I also have the lower cover off. Again another 3 bolts. see next pic....

This picture showes the 3 bolts of the lower cover. The bottom 2 you can get to straight on from the wheelwell.

The top one is up in there, but still easy to get to.

Once the bolts are out it comes off with no hangups and you now have a clear view of the timing belt.


Once the upper motor mount is removed, you have acess to the next step, removing the inner motor mount.



Here's the breaker bar on the motor mount bolts 15mm and 17mm sockets used here. There on tight, but they broke free easily.












Here's the motor mount disconnected.
You can also get a sneek peek at my secret trick to make the job foolproof..the white marks I painted on the cams and the old belt.

More pics of this to come.

But first, on to the inner motor mount.

By removing the inner mount, you get full access to get a wrench on the water pump. That eliminates the need for the special waper pump adjustment wrench.

(twisting the waterpump adjusts the belt tension). More on this in a bit.

Here's the 4 inner motor mount bolts.

There easy to reach even with a deep well socket. The lengths are different.

Once this is out of the way, you can gain access to the water pump (which will need to come all the way out for a NEW GASKET - you need a new gasket here...The old gasket is crushed into shape. It could very well develop a leak once disturbed.

We'll get into that in a little bit.

1st, some very important steps...

1st Aligning the cam sprockets.

Refer back to the earlier photo showing the lower timing sprocket notch aligned with the notch on the engine.
All these marks need to line up exactly as described. This is very important.
DO NOT REMOVE THE BELT YET.
This pic shows the upper cam sprocket alignment. Both lines point to each other exactly at there closest point, while the lower sprocket is lined up with its mark.

**IMPORTANT NOTE**

Do not remove the belt until the following steps are completed....

THE CAM GEARS MOVE ONCE YOU SLIP THE BELT OFF.

This is because of some tension being created by open valves.
They dont want to stay lined up anymore. And you dont want to turn them backwards.

So because of this, you want to MAKE A MARK ON THE OLD BELT AND CAM/CRANK GEARS.

I Used an old, tiny artists paint brush laying around with some white spray paint, sprayed onto the bristles.

I marked each cam gear at its exact top tooth (use the tooth not the valley) the mark was made on the belt and the sprockets. My paint faded so be sure to use a bright solid color and be obvious about it.

The same for the crank pulley, ( again,see earlier pic up top) Be sure to mark all 3!

This step can save you a big re-installation headache. See pic..

Here are the marks I made.

There will be more on these marks in a bit, for now its time to get the water pump loosened. To get some slack so we can slip the old belt off and watch the cam sprockets magically move a few teeth.

I have not removed the belt yet.








In this pic I'm showing one of the 3 Allen head bolts surrounding the water pump (silver thing next to my hand).

You wont be able to break them free, If you only have a normal allen key like this. So here's a trick I used...

using a universal driver tool, with no chuck installed, it slips over the allen key end creating some needed leverage.





Here ya go.

The other 2 bolts are also accessible this way. They were a little too buried for the picture.

They can be seen from underneath the car as well. One is inset into the rear plastic cover. Just fish the allen key into the hole and you'll find it without to much trouble.







To be continued on 8 27 09