A timing belt adventure ?
 

Hi all,

little bit here, little bit there and I am doing the
maintenance...

The car has now 48,000 miles , however, its 8 years
old and I believe its time for a timing belt
replacement.

Took a look at Haynes manual, does not seem to be very
hard, however, looking at the engine bay you realize
that you have absolutely no room to put a neddle in
there (can you imagine put a wrench ?). I believe I
need to take the passanger side splash gard and wheel
guard to have a better access to the cranckshaft bolt
and related parts.

Anyhow, have any of you tried to replace the timing
belt by yourselves?

Next I would need to adjust the valves, but this
requires special tools and therefore need to send the
car to a mechanic.

I have not done one on a second gen pro but I have done many timing belts and they are always easier to do through the wheel well.

The thing to remember is you can take off anything you want to if it makes it easier for you to work. Another key thing to remember is that these engines are assembled outside of the bay for a reason!!

I switched out the timing belt on my '95 Protege and it was an absolute beast. Perhaps the biggest problem I encountered was removing the main bolt holding the crank pulley on, factory tight parts are a bad thing. I ended up putting the car on the ground, putting it in gear, holding the brakes down and I still couldn't remove the bolt. I ended up having to fab a bracket to bolt onto the four pulley bolts. Using that and holding on the brakes, I finally got the main bolt off. I'd ballpark the torque at about 250-300 ft-lbs.

Long story short, do not attempt a timing belt replacement unless you've got considerable experience working on your vehicle, a decent set of tools, and probably 10 hours to pour into the project. Even then I'd think long and hard about how much your time, elbow grease, and sanity is worth to you. If you need any pointers I could probably write up how I did the whole thing.

It's a doable job, but by no means is it fun or easy.