Valens

Got a dripping coolant leak right below the crankshaft pulley/serpentine belt area. I know it's coolant, I tasted it lol. I took off the upper front timing cover, mostly dry but saw trace amounts of coolant. Here are my questions:

1) It's gotta be the water pump right? Any other possibilities?
2) Previous owner did TB/WP job with a Gates kit back at 170k. I did see the Gates belt when I took off the cover. Kinda early for a Gates WP failure no?
3) What other components should I replace while I'm in there. I have a slow oil leak originating above the oil pan. Is the oil pump seal accessible during this job?

Thanks guys

Valens

Forgot to add, car currently has 218k. Relevant for question 2

peter6

1. If there are traces of coolant under covers, but nowhere else, then assume it's water pump.

2. Hard to tell. I'm not the fan of gates but apparently it's oem for some cars now. Also a chance that pump was not replaced at that time.

3. If you are doing water pump, might as well do whole timing job (pump, belt, tensioner).

Resealing oil pump requires taking off timing, oil pan, and part of the exhaust (j-pipe or y-pipe or whatever you want to call it).

Valens

1. If there are traces of coolant under covers, but nowhere else, then assume it's water pump.

You mean besides whatever is dripping on the floor right? I don't think there's anything else coolant related in the area. Has to be WP.

2. Hard to tell. I'm not the fan of gates but apparently it's oem for some cars now. Also a chance that pump was not replaced at that time.

3. If you are doing water pump, might as well do whole timing job (pump, belt, tensioner). - Going to do the whole thing. Good learning experience

Resealing oil pump requires taking off timing, oil pan, and part of the exhaust (j-pipe or y-pipe or whatever you want to call it)

How many extra hours of labor would this require of you? I'll triple your estimate for me lol

peter6

When I did my oil pump reseal I also did valve adjustment (or more like valve check since I didn't really adjust anything) and it took me about whole day in the shop. But that also includes launch and some screwing around.

Alldata gives 5.9h of labor to do oil pump. I needed to weld nuts to whatever was left of old nuts to separate exhaust behind the 3rd cat, and heat up all nuts on the front of the engine to separate y-pipe from main cats. That probably took some extra time, but no threads were damaged so I get off easy all things considered.

Valens

Yea I'm starting to see that the oil pump reseal isn't worth it for a 1qt/7000-mile leak. Gonna skip it. Thanks!

Valens

On a side note, I can't find any AISIN TB+WP kits anywhere. As you can imagine I wanted to avoid Gates after this. Does anyone know of a trusted eBay seller of AISIN kits?

peter6

Oh yea, we have this issue too. We sourced Aisin kits from rockauto, since you can't trust eBay and need to take a close look at what Amazon offers. So far we did only one job on Honda, and client went with oem pump, belt, and tensioner (pulleys were left alone), and I think it was around $400-500 in parts, but you can always check out oemacuraparts (or similar website) to figure it out.

Big "no" on those "OEM" honda kits on ebay (that even come with crank and cam seals). They have "Honda" stamped/printed all over them but are completely fake. Couple clients brought those kits with them and insisted to do the job, and we had at least 2 failed belts in short amount of time.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

No hydraulic tensioner!

According to the picture :wink:, Evergreen on Amazon, looks to have:
This item includes:
1 Timing Belt (197 teeth)
1 GMB Roller Tensioner Bearing
1 GMB Idler Bearing
2 Camshaft Seals (38.5 x 53 x 8)
1 Front Crankshaft Seal (41 x 56 x 8)
1 Hydraulic Tensioner / Tensioner Adjuster - is not included
1 AISIN Water Pump with Gasket (AISIN - OE Supplier for TOYOTA / LEXUS)



It might be possible to inquire before ordering to confirm what the picture shows?
Contacts – Evergreen Auto Parts and Components (evergreenengineparts.com)

4183 Temple City Blvd, Unit A
El Monte, CA 91731
(866) 364-7278
sale@evergreenengineparts.com

Good Luck!

t-rd

Gates water pump is chinese made with quality control issue, you shouldn't be surprised it leaks. Many reports on this, just read the reviews from Amazon

Valens

So I ended up buying this ridiculously cheap Gates kit directly off Walmart (not a 3rd party seller). Bought the AISIN WP off Rockauto on it's own. Will keep the Gates one as a backup I guess. I was gonna buy an OEM hydraulic tensioner but they want $137 for it. I'll have to roll the dice with Gates kit one

edit to add: If you guys don't have the octoshop extension for chrome, I highly recommend it. Just saved me $40 on the Gates kit.

Valens

So decided to start on this before the parts even arrived. Crank pulley bolt kicked my ass today. What's the most foolproof method of loosening it?

I did the bump start method so many times today. It sheared off my 3/8 breaker lol. And with my 1/2 in breaker, it wouldn't turn over. The starter motor just didn't have enough torque. I even tried leaving some space so the bar could gain some momentum. Didn't work. Any ideas?

peter6

This big boy:


And impact gun. Didn't failed me once.

redbeard1

The lisle socket and a top tier impact (those with around 700 pounds or more of reverse torque) will easily remove crankshaft pulley.

Many posters in the timing belt thread report success with a mid range gun and this socket.

Valens

Imma try a cheater bar with the floor jack holding the extension in place. Hoping to avoid a huge investment into an impact.

Valens

Victory achieved by putting my floor jack under the handle of the breaker bar. I tried that yesterday but I failed because the extensions kept wobbling. Used no extensions this time. Woop woop.

Edit: on a side note, my crank pulley has NO marks on it. I cleaned it up to be sure, wtf?

peter6

Crank pulley doesn't matter on this car. I never look at it. When you take all timing covers off and that small plate that sits between crank pulley and sprocket on the bottom you will see the mark. There should be a dot on the sprocket and small arrow at the 12 on the oil pump.

Just make sure that woodruff key doesn't come out with the crank pulley.

Pair of TLs

How can you go wrong with a 2-pound socket?

Valens

Update: Well this job was a damn doozy. Took me two full days. Mainly because of hard to reach bolts on the timing cover (and quadruple checking timing marks). I even snapped a WP bolt off (fuck Tekton torque wrenches). Luckily it seems to have been the least important bolt because I put everything back together and nothing is leaking. I'm knocking on wood but I think I got away with it. I compared the WP provided by the Gates kit and the Aisin one..... stay away from Gates, it's clearly inferior and cheaply made.