This is the 3 rd time I've done this on a 3rd gen and it was a right royal PITA. twice before on my old TE 3.0L and now on my TJ VRX. At the recommendation of a few people here I bought the complete kit from Mal late last year or earlier this year. Replacing the water pump, idler and tensioner bearings was straight forward but tensioning the belt was interesting. I couldn't get the 2-5mm gap between the tensioner and tensioner pivot. Mine was about 5.5mm even thought I used more torque than the 5Nm recommended. In fact a good mechanic friend says he tensions it way more than the 5Nm recommended and does it by feel. I agree as the first time I did it a decade ago on my TE, it slipped a tooth after the engine was started.

Anyway I thought to myself that the slightly bigger gap may be fine as maybe the spring constant in the tensioner is slightly higher and the tension of the belt on the back side of the rear cam felt good. So fingers crossed she started fine and made the tap tapety sound from the tappets now drained of oil from the 4-5 revolutions made by hand during the belt install. After a short 5 min drive the tappet noise disappeared.

So checked for coolant leaks, accountted for all the tools, gave the old girl a clean and headed on a 400 km trip from Newcastle to Coff Harbour. Couldn't be happier.

My mechanic friend said not to worry about the slight bigger gap on the tensioner, reckons it should be fine and if it was going to give out it would off in the first few Kms of driving. Oh the noise on initial cold start ups has gone, suspect it was one of the bearings.

Apologies for the long post.

Good job mate. I'm tackling mine soon. It's gonna be epic.

Important to get all the slack out of the drive side of the belt, that is going anticlockwise from crank, front cam, water pump, rear cam so all the slack is on the run controlled by the hydraulic tensioner.

My info says the pin in the hydraulic tensioner should slide out easily when the rear pulley is set up right, then rotate the crank clockwise 2 full turns to check the alignment marks and hydraulic tensioner adjustment.

Also, the projection should be 4.8 to 6.0 mm. (from manual)

And your mechanic is right, when you torque up the bolt for the rear tensioner, you do need to apply a lot of force on the pulley itself to stop it from turning with the bolt as it is tightened.

(Did my second 3rd gen belt change last week, the first was on a different car which has done about 15,000 km since then, and no problems, so I'm guessing I did it right.)