Thanks for all the great information, Bill!

Did you make the video with the double zip ties? Regardless, great idea and great video.

My wife and I are in Edmonton, unfortunately for me, but thanks anyway for your generous offer of your pulley holder.

How many kilometers on your vehicle? How did the old timing belt look? The guy in the video claims that if the belt is installed correctly, the belt will last a full 105,000 miles (= 168,981 kilometers). I'd be interested to know if anyone's ever run the original belt that many kilometers. I'm starting to get very nervous at 128,000 kms.

You know, after I read the part of your post about keeping the tensioner upright, I immediately went downstairs to look in the box of parts for the timing belt job, find the tensioner and make sure it's stored from now on upright. I found two important things in the box. First, I found that I had positioned the tensioner in the box standing upright. Second, more importantly, I found out that 5 years ago, when I ordered all the OEM parts, I also ordered the idler pulley in between the two cam shafts! I immediately wrote to the place from whom I recently ordered a Gates version, and asked them to cancel that part of the order. That's going to save me over $80, which is a good thing. That'll pay for most, if not all, of the cost of the OEM pulley holder.

When I install the tensioner for the first (and hopefully last) time, I'm going to make believe that it has been bled. Then I'll go through the procedures to determine if it is appying enough tension to the belt -- rotate the crank pulley twice, wait five minutes and measuring how much the shaft protrudes above the edge of the cylinder. If it's protruding according to specification after all of that, I'll continue with the job. If it does not protude enough, I'll un-install the tensioner and go through the bleeding procedure. Sound good?

After you removed the two engine covers, removed the two timing belt top covers, the engine mounts and lowered the engine, did you have good access to the crank pulley bolt for your rented impact wrench? How rugged a tool do you think is necessary to resist the turning force that the impact wrench is is appying to the crank bolt? I'm thinkng not very rugged. But you are correct about tightening, However, the Mitsubishi video recommends putting oil on the pulley bolt's threads before inserting, which really surprised me. I'll have to check the service manual to see if its advice is the same. I'm thinking that the impact wrench could do most of the clockwise tightening of the bolt with no holding tool, and then do the last few pound-feet with the socket and torque wrenches. When the guy in the video did the extra 60 degrees of tightening, the holding tool seemed more than adequate to hold the pulley (but of course we could not see the ten-foot breaker bar that was added to the other end of the holding tool ).

Did you replace camshaft or crank seals and, if so, how did that go?

Did you replace the water pump and, if so, how did that go?

Did you replace the idler pulley between the two camshafts and, if you did, how difficult was it to loosen its bolt? (I'm worried about removing that bolt Why Mitsubishi didn't put a hex head on that is beyond me.)

Aside form your initial frustration with the crank bolt, what did you find to be the most difficult part of the job?

Thanks again for your great post, Bill.

 

Hey hey,

I didn't make the video with the zip ties, but found it after some searching. The instructions that came with the belt suggested using one zip tie, but that wasn't working too well (it may just have been too small). Two zip ties worked a treat - it did take a bit of force to turn the crank to get the belt to stretch over, but not bad at all.
I have just a hair under 168k km on my vehicle and the old timing belt looked just fine. Veeeerry minor stretch when I compared it side by side with the new one, but no cracking or fraying whatsoever. At 128k I wouldn't be worried.
I didn't do the water pump (from what I've read the Mitsu pumps last a long time), but I did do the idler pulley and the tensioner pulley. The idler pulley bolt was pretty tight, but came loose with a breaker bar without too much trouble. Just be sure to use a good allen/hex key...a cheap one may deform with the amount of torque required to loosed that bolt.
Don't stress about the tensioner either - they only mention to keep it vertical after bleeding, so it's fine in the box however it came (but better safe than sorry I suppose). What you've proposed sounds great - bleed it, install, spin crank twice, wait a bit, check tension and go from there. The service manual gives you the ideal range of protrusion (9-13mm I think), and there's room to get calipers in there to check.
There's plenty of room to access the crank bolt from the wheel well after taking all the timing covers and the mud guard off. There's a decent amount of room from the top as well after you get the engine mount out of there. You'll need a pretty robust tool to hold the pulley - the first one I made was 1/8" flat bar and 3/8" bolts and it bent like cheese. The second tool with 1/2" bolts and 1/4" flat bar held up fine. It bent a bit when torqueing the pulley bolt in the end, but it worked. The service manual does say to add a bit of oil to the bolt (a minimal amount is what it says), then torque it to 200NM, back it out, then do the final torque (110 NM + 60 degrees or something like that). Toight! What you suggest would probably work though - hammer it in with the impact wrench, loosen it, then do the final torque.
Aside from the crank bolt, there wasn't anything too bad really...I took the intake plenum off to do spark plugs as well and there were some fiddly bolts hidden near the firewall but that's about it.
Best of luck!

 

Thanks, Bill. Everything you've said is very encouraging.

I'll make sure to use a quality Allen/hex wrench to remove the idler pulley bolt. Do you happen to know the size of the hex? I'm seriously considering buying a hex bit impact socket specifically for this job and use our relavively compact 20v impact driver to remove the bolt. I'll set the driver at low power and just let the tool pound away for awhile.

I mention the idler pulley bolt a lot because in the Portuguese video I referenced in Post #13 of this thread, the tech had to destroy the old pulley with and bolt with a grinder with cutting wheel in order to remove the pulley. Apparently the bolt would not break free. This is shown at 7:34 into the video. I'm also thinking that heating the bolt a bit with a torch and then letting it cool down a few times might make it a bit more easy to remove. The steel bolt will expand and contract differently than the aluminum block, etc.

I hope that I am able to get that bolt out of there as easily as you did, but just in case I have to destroy the old idler pulley and bolt, I must have a spare bolt handy to complete the job ASAP because the Outlander is our only vehicle. I'll call the local Mitusbishi dealers to see if they have a replacement bolt in stock.

Thanks again, Bill.

 

My experience with impact tool is that they can round out internal hex bolt quickly without warning. The idler pulley bolt looks like a 8mm or 10mm is my guess. This bolt has a 30 +- 7 ft lbs torque in the manual.

So my first choice would be use impact hex socket but using hand tool. The set I have is Sunex 3646 stubby. It has very good fit on those fragile drain plugs on cars, the combination of heat treated steel and short to direct power to the bolt, has not let me down. If you have a hex bit, and it has a loose fit, do not use it.

Also, you can add this to increase chance of success.

Vibra-TITE 470 DriveGrip Anti-Cam Out Fluid

 

I found this website but it has lots of spam, so I made a copy for you guys, if you want to read a tutorial with some actual in car pictures.

 

Thanks for the great information and pdf, GT.

I'll seriously consider using the DriveGrip stuff and a regular ratchet wrench rather the impact driver. Maybe the guy in the video used an impact driver and it rounded out the hole.

Bill, did you have to remove the power steering pump before you could take the timing covers off and, if you did, how difficult was it to do that and what did you do with the pump after removal, just let it flop in the breeze? If you did remove the pump, did you do all of that wrench work from underneath, or from above, or a combination of both?

Thanks.

Edit:

Just to follow up with whether or not it is necessary to remove the power steering pump to do a timing belt replacement, what follows is a screen capture of part of the service manual for the 6B31 engine in 2010s and 11s. Notice the pre-removal operation and steps of the procedure. Although the first pre-removal operation is to remove the engine cover, no mention is made to remove the power steering pump. If the pump does indeed have to be removed, I would think that that would at least be mentioned in the pre-removal section of the procedure. In all the reading I've been doing about the timing belt replacement procedure, nowhere other than that Russian car club pdf have I seen a step to remove the power steering pump, which, quite frankly, I'm not looking forward to doing.

 

I just determined that it is not necessary to remove the power steering pump in order to do a timing belt replacement on our 2010. I found a good picture of the lower cover and noted the positions of the 5 bolts that scure it to the engine. I then went to our vehicle and stuck my left hand/arm down into the engine compartment and felt around the side of the lower cover until I touched the head of the upper left most bolt that secures the cover to the engine. (At the same time I touched the other bolt on the left side that secures the upper left cover to the engine.) If my finger could get in there, I can also get a socket wrench extension on it. This is why removing the power steering pump is not mentioned in the service manual as prerequisite to doing the timing belt replacement. Good!


Lower cover:


Upper left cover:




While I was checking bolt locations with my fingers, I remembered something I had discovered just before I started the spark plug job -- a job which required good access and light near the firewall end of the engine compartment. I noticed that the hood-prop could be relocated to the place where the hood is attached to the hood hinge, as shown in two photos below. This position allows the hood to rise at a much steeper angle than that with the prop in the normal location. This position, in addtition to a rope going from the garage door opener support hardware to the hood-latch loop, provided great, well-lit access to the rear of the engine compartment. For a very tall guy like me, this is a god-send. Maybe you'll like it, too, but do provide additional support for the hood in case you accidentally knock the less-secure prop out of position.




Now the normal hood open position.

 

Hey Outlaander did you ever get a shipping quote from Bosch tools?

 

They haven't gotten back to me yet. I guess I'm going to have to try calling rather than writing.

 

Because I cannot count on anyone to sell me a tool in a short period of time, I've decided to make my own copy of the tool. Back to basics. Today I ordered a piece of mild steel flat bar 0.25" thick by 2.0" wide by 19" long from Metals Supermarket for $25CAD. I should have it in hand tomorrow or Tuesday. Below is a drawing of the business-end of the tool. There is a dip in the tool that is a segment of a circle that is 3.25" in diameter. There are two straight slots tangential to it that are 0.5" wide by 1-5/16" long at their longest points (3/8" bolt diameters are shown in the drawing at their minimum and maximum distances apart within the slots). I'll use a 20V, 1/2"-capacity hand drill to do all the drilling of the slots and a grinder to grind out the dip. I'll clean up the slots with a hand file. I'll drill four small holes in the four corners of a 1/2" square hole that will be near the end of the tool to accept a 1/2" breaker bar. Then I'll drill a 1/2" diamter hole in the center of the square and clean out the waste material with a hand file. I'll buy a couple of 3" long, 3/8", grade 8 bolts and four or six grade 8 nuts that will make up the "pins" that will poke into the holes of the pulley. The bolt heads will go through the holes of the pulleys and the "lip" they have (the underside of the bolt head) will hopefully help keep the tool in place. The bolts will be secured to the tool by a nut and washer on each side of the tool and tightened to prevent movement. Hopefully the thing will actully do its job. The End.