Timing belt mishaps

Well i just spent a good portion of the day yesterday doing my timing belt. Got the gates kit,before reading that everyone is using the aisin kit. Whatevs dont think that has anything to do with the problem. Before jumping into the job I had watched numerous vids and even found a free version of the FSM. YAAAY. So long story short I finished the job up yesterday with no major problems. Easy job in all honesty. Buuuuuuutttttt filling it up with coolant seemed to take forever, dealership told me I needed 2 gallons to fill it up and I needed more I was pissed because its Sunday today and they are closed. Well I found out that they might be right because I was piasing coolant out of what I believed to be the water pump. FML coolant was dripping quite well from under the timing belt covers. So now I need to rip it all apart again and either tighten down the bolts further or possibly find my solution while in there.

So I'm going to order a new belt and a new waterpump gasket just so I have what I believe is needed.

Fyi i didnt spray the new gasket with anything. I thoroughly scraped the old gasket down with my carbide scraper then went around again with a straight edge razor, that took a good solid 30 mins.

Torqued the water pump bolts all to 25ftlbs as the FSM said. Maybe I need to go more with the gates gasket. Well next weekend I'll find out, I'm hopeing to get in there fix my problem and find a way to test it before putting everything back together. I was thinking of filling up the water pump with water and using air to pressurize the system a little bit to check for leaks.

Any suggestions on how to perform such a test or even better anyone know what pressure I should test at?

Well till next weekend to hopefully finish the jobber.

 

Little clamps to hold the belt to the cam shaft wheels are the key to putting on a timing belt. Did one on the wife's front wheel drive RX. I never want to do it again.

 

That was the least of my worries yesterday, like I said everything went very smooth doing this job, until it was coolant time. I've done a few different timing belts before and minus a 95 civic this was one of the easier ones to do. A lot involved to get to it all but all in all not bad. If I had a buddy to help I couldve probably fished a few hours earlier.

 

I think I used this.

 

Did you smear it on the gasket or instead of gasket.

 

Now that I think about it. I used the water pump gasket included in the kit for the pump housing. Then used the Toyota gasket maker at the top square connection in the pic.

 

Yeah that top inlet gasket seems to be fine, I haven't found exactly where it's leaking from but I believe it's from the water pump. I feel the factory 25ftlbs isn't enough to crush down the gasket. I might try to just tighten the bolts down to 30 and try to figure a way to pressure test it.
Might try to block all holes and make a series of reducers to get to a air comp and just bump it up to idk 45 psi. Not sure what the system pressure is but I'd imagine it being high cause ive seen radiator caps come off with some pressure behind them.

 

Way too high on the pressure. Factory cap is a 13psi relief.

 

Excellent thank you, I was going to try to figure that info out if none chimed in.

 

I always spray gaskets with gasket sealer like this stuff. I never put gaskets on dry.

 

Ive read both stories of people using this and not. Most are success stories and others aren't. But at this point I tried dry so maybe I'll add this to my Amazon cart and use it.

 

FYI on the coolant. Zerex for Asian is a very good substitute in place of the Toy ‘Long Life’.

I recently did a total drain and fill and used exactly 3 gallons which I believe the spec is 3.1 gallons.

Zerex Asian 50/50 is about $17 a gallon. Meets all the exact Toy Japanese Specs/Certs IIRC.

Coolant is time sensitive and should be changed every 2 years as the Phosphate depletes.

 

Yeah I just basically dumped 2 gallons out of the super long life Toyota coolant. So thanks for the heads up on the zerex I'll order a few off of Amazon. I really hope this next time is the last time. Wont be until this weekend coming up unfortunately.

 

Just be super careful, maybe look up and buy new bolts if the kit doesn’t come with them. When I changed a leaky water pump on a 2.7l taco; I like you thought that torque speck was suuuuper low, if enough is good, more is better right? Wrong! I felt one start to spin on the bolt head!!! Eeek! I was able to reverse it and save the threads!

 

I've always coated both sides of the waterpump gasket with a THIN layer of RTV when replacing them. I've never had one leak.

 

Yeah I had one feel that way I backed it out to double check and everything looked normal except it had a little oil or coolant some form of liquid on it so I figured that's what was causing the feeling I was getting. Cleaned it and torqued it down with no funky feeling.

I was surprised it doesn't call for any rtv or like someone above mentioned the spray. I remember when I did my old Saturn I only used rtv to make a gasket, at age 16, and it didn't leak.

 

Yeah, the FSM doesn't but the hayne's manual does...in any case...its just what I've always done and its always worked.

 

Just an update, I pulled everything apart today to find out the crossover coolant tube oring was torn. When I was pushing the water pump in I must have torn it up. So I replaced the water pump gasket and the timing belt since I had ordered them. Luckily I had a set of orings laying around that I found a replacement for the torn one. I used 3m silicone and put it on all orings during install, made it so much easier to install everything. Smacked everything together and everything worked very well. I ended up torquing all the water pump bolts down to 27 instead of factory 25. Unfortunately I found out that my clutch on my fan is stuck open, not allowing the truck to fully heat up to open the thermostat. But I have heat and everything else seems fine. So onwards and upwards. My truck should be good to go again.