I hadn't seen one a photo walkthrough of this yet, so I took the liberty of extending my project by 10 minutes for photo opportunities.... This is a halfassed walkthrough pictorial of doing a timing belt, idler wheels, water pump, and thermostat on a 2000 2.5 SOHC normal aspirated Legacy. This is NOT here as a perfect, step-by-step, fool-proof walk through. This is here to give new owners a good idea of what they're getting into by doing this job. I assure you, this includes at least one "that's a bad idea..." procedure. I'll elaborate on that when I get to it. So, here's your 2.5 SOHC... Remove the plastic guard by the passenger side wheel (three screws) and drain the coolant. The plug in the radiator is a plastic phillips head bolt. Remove it and drain out the radiator. Disconnect the fan motor clips. There's two of them, you have to pull the plastic tab outward to disconnect them. Unbolt the thermostat housing and drain coolant from there also. Remove the upper radiator hose also, remove the two bolts on the reservior and remove it, and unbolt the two retainers on the top of the radiator (shown on floor in picture). It should lift out pretty easily at that point. Be careful to not dent up the fins on the AC Condenser. Remove the accessory belts and the AC idler bracket, and you'll have the following: Here's the stupid thing I did: To loosen harmonic balancer retainer bolt, prop breaker bar with 22mm socket on bolt, reconnect battery, hit starter to turn motor. I whole-heartedly encourage you to NOT DO THIS. There's a whole mess of things that can go wrong doing this, but I'm just a bad mechanic like that. So, once your balancer is removed, you'll need to remove the timing belt covers. One has three bolts and covers only the driver's side cam pulley, the other one is the following: The above TB cover only has one bolt that's different than the rest, and it's the lowest one on there (kinda rusty in the pic). The rest are all identical shoulder bolts. So, here's your timing belt and idlers: Place the balancer back on, and rethread the bolt. Use the breaker bar to rotate the crankshaft until ALL of the following markings are positioned at 12:00. Remove the bolt and balancer again, and remove the retainer clip over the crank pulley: Remove idler wheels and tensioner, and old, stretched, cracked, glazed belt. Proceed to thank God that it didn't snap and grenade your engine. Remove the water pump, and replace it. Pretty self-explanatory. Five identical bolts, just get it lined up correctly. No advice there other than get them all threaded before torquing any down... Place the belt so that the green solid lines match up with the markings on the cam pulleys, the green dotted line matches up with the marking on the crank pulley, and the printed text is upright while you're looking at it from the nose of the car. Install upper smooth pulley, lower toothed pulley, and bolt in the tensioner but DON'T PULL THE PIN YET. Leave the lower smooth pulley for last, it makes belt installation easier. Once you've got them all bolted in, double check the markings on the belt and the markings on the pulleys. They should be perfect. Check the markings again. They better damn well be perfect... Once you're 100% confident that the belt is correct, the pulleys are all correct and tight, the markings are lined up, pull the pin. Use a crappy old credit card or something to space the crank pulley belt retainer clip, push the clip down tight on the card/pulley, and torque it down. Proceed with reassembly in the reverse order, only use a new thermostat, because what kinda goon would reuse a $7 thermostat?. Please, if there's something I missed, or I'm wrong about anything, correct me! For those of you diligent enough to still be reading, this is what a 141000 mile factory belt looks like :eek4: :
good write-up. nothing wrong with the starter-bump trick. as long as you use the right sized socket (the Crank bolt is a 21mm.....). just make sure the breaker bar is resting solidly against the frame rail, and the ignition coil is un-plugged (don't want the engine to start with the breaker bar on it!!!!!!).
Correction, the crank bolt is a 22mm, not a 21mm. If you can manage to fit a 21mm over it, your socket is wrecked.
This must have changed at some point. I know I've always used a 21 on all my subaru engines (newest being a '94 EJ22e).
thanks for all your help! Turned out there was no evidence of oil seal / pump leaking, so I didn't end up doing that stuff. I kept the belt and bad idlers to laugh about how bad they are when I return the unused parts.
nice, this would have been very helpful for me a few weeks ago. mine was very similar just a couple of minor tweaks nice job!
You know there is an easier way to loosen the crankshaft pulley bolt right? Under the throttle body is like a rubbery cap. Take that cap off and put a bar in the flywheel to hold it and bam! Done!
