Timing belt sticker shock

So I stopped by 2 shops to get quotes for the timing belt service. I have the Aisin kit, Gates hoses and a new radiator. 1 shop quoted $500 labor. 2nd shop quoted $1100 but said that would include the crank seal and cam shaft seals.

Does this sound reasonable?

Thx.

 

The 1100 sounds about right if your seals are leaking.. to replace the cam seals on the vvti engine you have to remove the camshafts. Which means pulling the valve covers and the. The cams.

 

Pretty sure the cam seals aren't currently leaking, but the 2nd shop recommends doing them.

I'm supplying the majority of the parts.

 

If the cam seals don’t appear to be leaking you can not do them, it saves a lot in labor. But if they do start leaking you’ll have to pull the timing belt apart again. So it’s a matter of if you want to do it now as preventative maintenance or later when it leaks (they usually don’t leak too bad and a lot of people ignore them till it’s due for a belt again)

 

Yes, they said in their experience the cam seals often leak about 10-20k miles after the timing belt replacement.

 

112k

 

its your call. i did mine when i did my belt. but mine were leaking. they werent leaking bad... but i dont like looking at oil on my engine. lol

 

I only want do this once. I mostly do my own labor so I was somewhat shocked at the quote. That's about what I would expect from a dealer.

 

its been a good bit since ive done one at work. but i believe with labor the cam seals and belt with parts is 1500-1600 at the dealer

 

10+

 

Do the water pump while at it.

 

The 500 sounds reasonable to me. I didn't do cam seals and I changed it around about 170k. They weren't leaking. My best friend is a Master Tech at Toyota and I "helped" him do it in the driveway. He said he hasn't seen alot that leak, but he always recommends it to customers for obvious reasons. We didn't do mine though.

Also did the water pump and serpentine belt.

 

the VVTI ones leak moreso than non vvti, but even then its not super common. mine had almost 200k when done. so leaking is kinda expected.

 

yea they wonder why we cant sell timing belts with cam seals when their leaking.. and i just look at them dumbfounded... maybe its the $140 an hour labor and the extreme markup on parts... hmmm

 

How much does he want

 

PM sent.

 

I recently had a trusted shop with ALOT of Toyota truck experience do the following:

Clean Intake
Aisin TB/WP kit
cam seals
crankshaft seal
valve cover gaskets
Spark Plugs
Serpintine belt, pulley and tensioner
Thermostat
8 spark plugs
Oil/Filter Change
2x drain and fill of Transmission

They charged me $950 and I was pretty happy with that. I brought all the parts and they totaled about $430 on Rock Auto if I remember correctly...

 

Man, that is a steal. I'm in shock honestly. That has to be labor only with your supplying the parts. Right?

@SoCalPaul I paid around $900 for timing belt and water pump at the dealership. $500 for just labor seems fair. Have you considered doing it yourself? I've "heard" people say this is one of the easier engines to do a timing belt on and I know from your previous posts that you're pretty capable.

 

Yea, I edited my post to point that out....I was still very pleased with that price for that amount of work. His price included the toyota coolant and ATF because I did not bring those.

 

This is probably a silly question for the more knowledgeable here, but how does one know if they are leaking? Can you see these seals with the valve covers off?

 

The front of the motor usually get covered in oil. You cannot see them with the covers off, but if you pull the upper timing covers you can see down and tell if they are

 

No way I'd do the cam seals on a VVI engine unless they were dumping oil. Mine were bone dry at 167k on my 2006. Cam seals on non VVI are pretty straight forward, pop off the old seal from the front of the engine and push a new one in. But on the VVI engines you need to fully disassemble the cams and timing gearing that meshes the intake and exhaust together. I'm sure lots of experienced techs get it right, but there's always the risk of a newbie tech getting it wrong.

 

My 19 year old neighbor did mine....can't be that hard

 

I replaced mine twice (with the full Aisin kit), each 90k miles on my 2006 AC SR5 (sold it to my daughter with 225,000 on it). No leakage on the cam seals.

The second time I went through just about everything under the hood (new battery, replaced brake fluid, new serpentine belt, new alternator brushes, new upper and lower radiator hoses, replaced power steering fluid, new spark plugs, checked valve clearances, new valve cover gaskets, new air filter, new thermostat).

It took me most of a weekend, I think I finished around noon on Sunday. Since I had done it once before, second time went much easier (even though I did much more work on it).

When I closed the hood, I had a real good feeling that I wouldn't have to do anything but basic maintenance for some time. My daughter has had the Tundra for about 1 1/2 years and is planning on the next timing belt change (she is close to 270k miles). She has an excellent mechanic to turn to but I will advise as necessary.

Dan

 

Mine was about $1150 and included a rental car for the day at Toyota, that was about 5 years ago. They claimed to do the cam seals as well but I'm suspicious of that, all I cared about was the belt and pump.

 

set timing mark to point at the middle of the idler pulley bolt and theres no risk of valve/piston contact.
that being said i've had to replace a few engines from botched t-belt jobs. no cam seal jobs botched that ive dealt with

 

My plan was to do it myself, but my asthma has been acting up and I’m concerned that I might get to a point and get stuck. My water pump is leaking and I just want to get it fixed so I feel comfortable taking a couple of trips.

 

Just had mine done a couple days ago. Going be doing a lot of traveling in the coming months so I figured I'd play it safe and get done now at 98,880 miles.

Anti-freeze
Crank seal
Thermostat + gasket
Aisin TB/WP kit
Spark plugs
Parts $635
Labor $802
+tax $1490 total
Truck's running great,no leaks,no problems,so pretty happy with it so far. One thing I'm kind of miffed about is they charged $406.98 for the TB kit.
That seems pretty high since it can be found on Amazon for $168.00 and eBay for $200-250 from a bunch of sellers. But my shop has done me solid for many years so I'm not really complaining about it that much.