Changing it up! Toyota Land Cruiser 2UZ-FE Timing Belt Change

So I had a little different job to do last weekend. It didn't involve a BMW, but I was up to the challenge. My doctor has a 1998 Land Cruiser that needed some preventive maintenance. The dealer in Santa Monica was quoting him around $3000 for a timing belt change and some other maintenance. He knew that I like working on cars and well, long story short, I have a Land Cruiser in my garage Saturday morning!

My initial inspection didn't yield anything to out of the ordinary for a Toyota with 187,000 miles on the clock. Everything worked fine! No but really, all I noticed was that the brakes needed to be bled and the alignment was off. Other than that the car drove and handling perfectly.

The 2UZ-FE V8 motor has a rubber timing belt which needs to be changed every 90k miles. This was my main task. I looked up the parts which might as well need to be changed and ordered them from BMA Parts. There are similar sets on ebay, but they are $240 and use the cheap GMB Korean brand parts. I ordered only OE parts which came on the car from the factory for the same price from BMA. I decided at 187,000 to throw in the belt tensioner for another $30 just to be safe. I also like to use the OEM brand coolant whenever possible. I found it for $20 a gallon from ETY Parts. He misquoted me on the phone so discount for me! Usually it's about $26.

I stand by both BMA and ETY. They are both stand up parts stores and can usually match or beat any price. ETY is a little smaller and I like to support them if they can give me the best price. Sometime they can't, but that's the breaks. If you're in the midwest FAP99 seems to be the best price.

Here's a shot of the parts.

So before I did anything I did a little research. I downloaded PDF versions of the Toyota Service Manual which contained all the information necessary to do the job including the tightening torques. I also found this DIY which assisted me when I needed to hear the same directions from an ordinary human.

So let's get started with a few images and my take on the job. Here's a shot of the engine bay and the big v8 were dealing with. Oh, I should mention, this thing was wall to wall, end to end in my 9x20 garage. If you were fat, you wouldn't have been able to do the job in this garage. It was tight.

Step one, take off the skid plate and lower covers and drain the radiator.


I would've drained the coolant from the block, but having only met this car 15 minutes prior, I wasn't able to locate the drain plugs. I went the way of the DIY written above and caught the coolant as I removed each essential part. Honestly too messy of a way to do it, but it works.

Next step remove the beauty cover.

Remove the air intake system.

Now you should be able to remove the radiator and shroud. The A/C lines connect to the shroud, but you can just unhook them and work around it. I had no intentions of releasing freon to the atmosphere and re-charging the system so they just live in space there. It was easy enough to work around.

Remove the shroud bolts, move it back and remove the radiator first. Then pull the shroud out. Next up....FAN CLUTCH! F@4#%#$!

Fan clutches are never easy to remove. The pulley was slipping under the tension of the drive belt so keeping it attached didn't do anything. I removed the drive belt by turning the left hand thread tensioner pulley clockwise.

There are four bolts holding the clutch to the pulley. There was no information about how to remove these in the DIY or SM. I had to immobilize the clutch somehow. I devised a pretty easy method using the old drive belt.

With the drive belt removed, double it up and put a small socket in the end. Something that won't fit between the crank and the fan clutch pulley. Wrap it around the fan pulley like so and as you crank down on the bolts the socket between the rubber will get sandwiched and prevent the pulley from moving. Worked pretty well!

That took a little bit of ingenuity and trial and error before something worked, but I was soon flying high having defeated another fan clutch. The fan clutch on my e30 was an all day event. That's another story.

So this is about what you should be staring at once all that is done.

Now you can get down to business. Remove the right hand timing belt cover. Right and Left as if you were driving.

Remove the left-hand timing belt cover. There are a couple more items on this side. You must remove the oil cooler tube running down directly in front of it. If you didn't drain the coolant from the block, this is one of those messy moments. Also remove the idler pulley.

After those covers and tube are removed it's time to remove the fan bracket. This was another one of those WTF moments. It wasn't clear in the DIY or the SM how to remove this thing. There are 4 total obvious bolts and nuts on the front. In the SM it says remove the A/C compressor. In the DIY it says you just need to remove 2 bolts that share the A/C bracket, but I mistook that as 2 of the four on front. Either way the two bolts are facing the left wheel well and hold the A/C compressor to the fan bracket. One is easy to remove, the other one required me to remove the oil filter to get a wrench in there.

Once all 6 of those bolts/nuts are removed you should be able to whack the fan bracket with a rubber mallet to bust it from it's nestled sleep.

On the opposite side, remove the power steering pump and alternator to remove the tensioner pulley. The p/s pump and alternator simply lay on the support beneath them without too much of a problem.

Now with all that off you can check to make sure the engine is at TDC on the compression cycle. The marks on the front and rear of the cam line up with the rear cover.


The notch on the crank will line up with "0" on the lower cover. I somehow stopped the car in the garage at TDC on the compression cycle. I might have had to turn the crank 10 degrees. Spooky.....

Now it's time to remove the crank bolt and crank pulley. Without a tool to hold the crank, I'm not sure how I would have got it off. I used an impact wrench. Yee Haw! After that I used my lifetime warranty Sears Craftsman crank pulley tool for $20. I had heard the harbor freight ones break, and well if this one breaks, for the same price, it's warranted for life.

I hadn't used one before and just looking at pictures on the internet didn't explain everything to me. The crank pulley has threaded holes around the inside for the use of tools to remove it or hold it still. Find the correct bolts that thread into those holes and then leverage the yoke against them to pull the crank off. The bolts supplied in the Craftsman kit I bought were the correct metric pitch and size.

Remove the cover behind the pulley and you'll see we have everything at the TDC marks ready to remove the belt. Before doing that make sure to mark the belt at the points on the two cams and the one on the lower side of the crank. Even though the new belt comes with marks on it, it's a good idea just to double check, transfer the points and count the ribs to make sure the new belt is in the same position as the old one.

Remove the rusty belt tensioner to release the tension on the belt. Although super rusty, it still held it's tension and technically didn't need to be replaced.

With the tension off the belt, you can simply slide it off. About an hour before I got to this point, I started to realize none of these bolts had ever been turned in the 12 years/187,555 miles of this Land Cruiser's life. The timing belt is a maintenance that is supposed to be done every 90k miles and I was starting to see that this belt had never been changed!

See all those little cracks next to that big one? Those were everywhere. I'm no timing belt inspector expert, but I would say it was time. It may have been good for another 6000 or 60k miles, but still, although not a terrible separation, a crack in a timing belt is never good.

Also you can see the water pump gasket is leaking. This was one of the original inspections made by the Toyota dealership. Looks like we found it.


Now remove the upper cooling pipe that houses the thermostat. It is a silicone seal and it's a bitch to get off. I sprayed some PB Blaster in the area where the o-ring connects and life became a little easier.

My experience in the past is that the thermostat either works or it doesn't. If it works, no need to replace it. The chances of getting a new one that is faulty or opens at 10 degrees hotter than the one you're replacing is as probable as one failing so I left it alone.

I was very impressed with Japanese quality by now. VW 1.8t motors grenade under 60k with their timing belt issues. BMW e30 m20 motors are littered on Craigslist with broken timing belts. It may just be a matter of time before we start seeing Tundra/Land Cruiser's for sale with busted belts, but if it's not going to go at 187k, I'd say that's pretty good.

Granted it could be the low RPMs or driving style, but it could also just be the design and engineering of the parts and the motor. From my prior experience with German cars, for a car to run this well, this long and for not a single bolt to have been turned past the radiator for 187k miles really says something about quality.

Alright, with the upper thermostat housing removed it should look something like this. All that is left to do it remove the water pump. This is another time when removing the coolant from the block would've been advantageous.

So now everything is removed. It is just a matter of putting everything back in the reverse order of tear down and torquing it to spec. The torque specs are available in the Toyota SM which I downloaded from PDF Town.

Get your new water pump and put some RTV around the inside of the gasket on both sides for good measure. I noticed the OEM gasket had a silicone seal on it as well. I ordered an Aisin water pump which is the original pump that came with the car with a metal gasket.

Move that into place and be sure to replace the o-ring that attaches to it. You can see it on the pipe connecting to the water pump in this picture. It is a 3/32" thickness. I'm not sure the OD or ID, but I matched it up at the hardware store. It is most likely available from the parts store, but I forgot to order it.

Next, the seal between the thermostat housing and water pump is silicone only. Dig out that trough and clean it up.

Same as before, fill the trough with silicone and put on the new o-ring. This o-ring I ordered from BMA. It was the "water pump housing o-ring." I lubricated it with soapy water as instructed by the manual.


Now you can put the idler pulley and idler roller back on. The bearings I removed were still in decent shape, but I didn't want to take any chances at 187k miles. I replaced them with JP Koyo Bearings. The same that were on there.

Use a little loctite on the ends. The manual calls for blue 242. I only had red 262. I didn't over do it.

Once that is all set you can slid the timing belt back into place. This is always a dicey moment. Just to be sure I counted the ribs on the old belt between points twice and made sure the new belt was marked correctly. I'm sure there is QC on the belts, but you never know and it doesn't take much time to make sure your engine is timed correctly. I did the same for the ribs between the cam and the crank marker.


I had to gently move the cam on the left side to release some of the tension to insure everything lined up. These pictures show the cycle starting to turn a bit, but the marks on the belt line up with the marks on the cam. That's what's important. Here is the little white point on the crank.

Once you have triple checked that everything looks good you can re-install the tensioner.

From here I put the sprocket and lower timing cover back on. I slid the crank pulley back on and threaded the crank bolt. This is where you rotate the engine two full revolutions to make sure the marks on the cams line up with the marks on the covers and same for the crank notch to be at, "0."

At first I was looking for the marks on the timing belt to line up with the marks on the cam, but those are only for installation only. You're only looking at the marks on the cam. I noticed that the belt was rubbing on something and came to realize I installed the sprocket backwards. I took off the crank and cover and flipped that around, turned 2 more revolutions and everything was fine. Make sure that everything feels smooth, don't just assume you've timed it correctly.

So that's about it. Put everything back the way it came off and fill it up with some coolant. The crank pulley bolt calls for 181 ft-lbs. of force. I snugged it up with my impact gun which exceeds that torque at max. I don't recommend the impact gun for installation of anything, but in this case I used it for extra insurance.

In the DIY, the author talks about jacking the front of the vehicle up to burp the system. I was able to fill the radiator with about 2.5 gallons of coolant. I ran the car with the heater on while revving it to about 2000-2500 rpm until the thermostat opened and moved some of the coolant around. I would carefully remove the radiator cap to expel air until only liquid would come out. The heater should be blowing hot by now as well. You can turn off the car and make sure it's full. The expansion tank will read right in the middle between LOW and FULL.

I also cleaned up the cosmetic valve cover.

So there you have it. Took me about 2 days 14 hours with breaks. I got stuck at the fan clutch and fan bracket. I also had to go out and find the correct o-ring. If I had to do it again, I would say it's about an 8 hour job.

I hadn't done anything like this before on a Japanese car, but I figured being used to German cars, it should be pretty straight forward. I had done the same job on an e30 and although being a little weary about quite a job on a different car, my doctor's trust and a little naivety allowed me to think positively and do the job. More often than not I won't approach something like this unless it's safe for me and I know all the ins and outs. I think it was just the right amount of risk to push myself and believe in my abilities.

Overall, working on a Japanese car with a huge engine bay was a treat. The manuals and engineering are very smart. Nothing is over engineered or laborious which can be common to some German cars. It is just the right amount of simplicity and minimalism to make something work.

Big Baller. New Stance, New Shoes.

So here is how the car sits now with the H&R race springs installed. I believe the car is flat and lowered evenly, but the rear just looks lower than the front. That's my only beef with the look. I'm pretty sure that the rear oblong flare of the e36 just looks like that, but if it were me and I had coil-overs, I would create a little more rake.

After that I threw on the style 197 wheels I picked up a couple months ago. Since every kid out here in socal sells the stock wheels off their lease car that daddy paid for, I was able to get these relatively on the cheap. They're made by BBS 18x8 F 18x8.5 R with the correct offset for the 3-series. I'm not one usually to run modern style wheels on an older car, but for the look, price, size and something that hasn't been played to death I had to go for it.

I didn't have the time or means to get a photo shoot going on, but you get the idea. I'm pretty happy with the look. It's for sure more of a baller setup than anything performance related. The rims and run-flats are much heavier. It's really just a rim for cruising. Definitely an upgrade from my curbed up DS1s!

Fog Light How-To

So one of my fog lights died. I figured, this will be easy. What was I thinking? This is a German car. Whatever solution they decided for the fog lights will be ingenious and simple, but not obvious. I had to consult the bentley.

There is apparently a little tab you can depress through the grill or brake duct, depending on e36 model, that releases the fog light. After that you can replace the bulb. That's it. I was pulling from behind. Trying all sorts of wrong ideas.

I thought that was pretty cool. In the end it was a very simple and easy way to remove light, just not totally intuitive.

Dumpy Dump. H&R Race Spring Installation.

Mileage 143,300

So I finally got around to installing a set of H&R Race Springs for my 1995 M3. I already had the billie sports left on from the previous owner so I figured I would pair them up with the race springs. I could not find them for cheaper than $240 shipped. I shopped around awhile too. The best deal I found was from the Tirerack at $246.05 shipped.

In addition to the springs I also ordered new upper and lower spring pads for the front and rear as well as the replacement self-locking and locking collar nuts for the front. This was the first job in the new garage, and I was a little hesitant due to the large amount of black widow spiders I had killed the weeks prior. I bought some crazy spider spray, and as long as I kept my eyes out I would be ok. Southern California garage work. Small and spider ridden. It doesn't get much better than that.

So first things first I checked out the bentley to see what it had to say about suspension installation. Of course it wanted me to remove the caliper, rotor, steering arm, tie rod etc...but I took a look and it appeared that I could just unbolt the strut assembly and support the hub without much of a problem.

There are three bolts connecting the steering arm to the strut. Three collar nuts up top holding the strut mount to the body and one nut attached to the end link of the sway bar, if you have one. I unbolted everything on the bottom with a little help from my air tools then slowly took the nuts off the top. I put a jack under the control arm and placed various devices in accordance with some addtional jacks stands at various points of rigidity to station the brake and hub assembly from moving and tearing a ball joint. A wire hanger may work as well.

I pulled the strut assembly out without much of a problem. I then turned my attention to my newly purchased $8 spring compressors from Harbor Freight.

I strapped those bad boys up to the spring and hit the top 22mm nut with my impact wrench. As you can see the dust boot got a little twisted, but that simply straightened out and didn't tear.

The spring actually didn't fully uncompress until I broke the spring perch free from the strut. This was after I already removed the compressors. It bounced a little, but it wasn't under much tension.

I decided to just reuse the 95 strut mounts with all their miles on them. New ones weren't cheap. About $90 a piece. I figured I would just replace them with Caster/Camber mounts kits when the time came so I had no problem reusing them.

I replaced the busted up spring pads.

Whoever installed the Bilstein sports didn't use the correct top spring pads. It looks like they just used all lower spring pads. The front left was torn and the others were blown out.

I wasn't exactly sure which direction the spring was supposed to go. It didn't really say in the H&R handout either. I assumed the dead coils, or coils bunched close together, would go at the top and the logo would be right side up. Let me know if I'm wrong, because I couldn't find any definite information. I just went with "logic."

UPDATE: Called H&R. They confirmed the dead coils go at the top and the logos go right side up.

Comparison side by side stock vs. H&R Race

So I put the new pads in and dropped the spring in. I assembled the strut mount back on top with the assortment of washers and then torqued it down using a new self-locking nut. I was able to torque the nut down to 32ftlbs. I then hit it with the impact for a little extra snug.

I used my special 22mm socket that I have repurposed into a, "strut tool/castle socket." It looks nasty but does the job. It was first, "created," way back so I could hold the top nut of struts while accessing the internal hex, but then it turned into a castle socket for a clutch replacement on a 1974 cb750. It still works!

Assembled and ready to go back in.

Without disturbing the brake/hub assembly contraption I put the strut assembly back into it's place. I held it in by threading the new collar nuts up top and then tightened down the rest of the bolts.

The other side went pretty much the same way only faster.

Unfortunately I suffered from lowered car-double jack syndrome when trying to put the car back down after the fronts were installed. Usually I put the low profile jack in the front and jack up the middle of the front subframe. I did this after completing the spring installation and basically trapped my jack under the car. There was no room to pump the jack back up so I resorted to the factory jack! Which to my surprise is probably the best factory jack I have ever seen out of any car I've owned.

E36 M3 Factory jack FTW!

I backed the car in for the rears and also decided to bypass the Bentley's suggestion of rear spring removal. It consisted of removing the axle from the diff and lowering the rear trailing arm etc, so I basically said not today. I jacked the car up and removed the lower strut bolt. I positioned a jack beneath the trailing arm but it only rebounded a little bit.

I didn't have enough men or much of my own man power to just push down on the hub assembly and pull the spring out so I went with the redneck solution. I got the spring compressors in there as much as I could and started clamping the spring down.

After awhile I was able to wedge the stock spring out of its pocket. I'm kind of embarrassed to show that image, but that's how I did it. Not sure if that's ghetto or standard, but it worked.

I replaced the upper and lower spring pads with the OEM replacement pieces. The race spring went in without much convincing. I used a long wrench to pry down the suspension and push the spring into place. After that I torqued the bolt on the rear strut down and put the wheel back on. The rears didn't take much time at all.

Left rear installed.

Right rear installed.

Loaded gun rolling around the garage.

Another OEM BMW part that I've never used but decided to bust out purely out of being exhausted and fed up with wheel bolts instead of studs is the thing that comes in the tool kit on the boot lid. It's job is to actually go into a wheel bolt thread to help align the wheel.

Another shot of the "tool"

Overall the job went down about as expected. Would've been a bigger pain in the ass without air tools. Also might not have been possible without the spring compressors. And as far as the first run in the garage goes...not bad! About the same space as the last place but totally enclosed so I was covered from the rain this weekend. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked out as well as it did. I'll post some pics of just the garage in a couple weeks.

As far as ride quality and performance goes...well it was too wet to get on some corners. It's definitely more stiff, but the billie sports account for about 75% of that. I'm saying that it was already stiff, now it's just paired with the correct springs. We'll have to see how it goes on the track! I'm excited to see what it can do, stay tuned.