Well, I finished up the timing belt/water pump install on the old girl today and it appears to have been a success. She fired right up and seems to be running smoother and quieter. (I attribute this to replacing the serpentine belt with a Gatorback and replacing the bearing on the tensioner pulley that felt like it was going bad. All in all, not a bad job, but it did take me the better part of two days. (but I don't work as fast as I used to).
I did replace the thermostat with a Stant T-stat. Noticed that there was no bleed hole on the Stant T-stat, so figuring this could be a problem, before installing it, I drilled a very small hole through the body. All seems well with that.
The camshaft position sensor wire is a PITA. I ended up cutting a slot in the RH cam pulley cover with a dremel and that worked out pretty well.
The other PITA was the crankshaft bolt, but after screwing around trying to make a tool to hold the cank out of a 2x4, which promptly split in half when I tried to remove the bolt. Impact wrench did a fine job of removing it. (had to go buy an impact wrench though). Somebody else on here said they had success in using a 2x4 but I did not.
All of the information I was able to find on this forum was extremely helpful. Thanks to all contributors. A special thanks to mibro for the step-by-step guide you put together, which I found extremely helpful.
I did replace the thermostat with a Stant T-stat. Noticed that there was no bleed hole on the Stant T-stat, so figuring this could be a problem, before installing it, I drilled a very small hole through the body. All seems well with that.
The camshaft position sensor wire is a PITA. I ended up cutting a slot in the RH cam pulley cover with a dremel and that worked out pretty well.
The other PITA was the crankshaft bolt, but after screwing around trying to make a tool to hold the cank out of a 2x4, which promptly split in half when I tried to remove the bolt. Impact wrench did a fine job of removing it. (had to go buy an impact wrench though). Somebody else on here said they had success in using a 2x4 but I did not.
All of the information I was able to find on this forum was extremely helpful. Thanks to all contributors. A special thanks to mibro for the step-by-step guide you put together, which I found extremely helpful.