Hey guys,

I just bought a timing belt kit for my magna and was just wondering if anyone had any advice on replacing it. I am a 4th year apprentice mechanic and have done a about 3 timing belts before but never on a 4G64 engine.

I am going to be doing this at home one weekend as we are too busy at work apparently...

So is there any special tools that i'm going to need or anything to should look out for?

I also plan on replacing the water pump while i'm at it, dont want to replace the timing belt and then in a couple 1000kms the water pump starts leaking.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I really need to replace the timing belt, I just bought the car and noticed a sticker on the strut tower for the timing belt and its about 30,000kms overdue. The previous owner also didn't service the engine too often.

There are actually several special tools required for your model

There are tools for the balance shaft belt tensioner and then for the belt itself.

These are not too hard to do but are rather fiddly. I would strongly suggest you either get yourself a manual or if you want to drop past I can copy a few pages from the factory manual

Oh ok, thats what I was worried about, thats why I wanted to find out about special tools.

I've done it on the 4g64 twin cam engines in a JDM Galant, and its a bit fiddly. I got away without any special tools by "guessing" to some extent the tension on the balance shaft belt.

This is a matter of experience/confidence really - I've done way too many timing belts over the years and was happy I got it about right (it ran for years and years afterwards, so I guess it was ok!). But if you're not confident (or you're working on a customer car you don't want back with a totalled engine!) it's worth setting it by the book. Up to you ;)

The rest was standard stuff - use a torque wrench on crititical bolts, get the gap on the auto tensioner right.