I am looking at doing the 90,000 mile timing belt replacement on my girlfriend's '99 ES soon. I have seen a timing belt kit on eBay which includes the belt, tensioner and idler pulleys. It seems to me to be a good idea to change those out at the same time (one of my brothers had a tensioner pulley fail on his Audi 4000 and the belt was then toasted), but a search on here revealed no info on whether or not anyone else has done this. When I checked on parts, the dealer rep told me "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Thanks buddy!

Anyhow, Mazda doesn't offer a kit for this, my local parts store has no listing for a Gates kit (they do have a nice little brochure describing their kits, but no availability for our cars), and I am a little leery of the eBay kit (it is extremely cheap, $50 compared to a total of $200 for all Mazda parts). If anyone has some info on this I would greatly appreciate it.

Just to preempt the inevitable advice, I will be changing the water pump at the same time. And the plugs, wires, and whatever else needs it. This should give me some huge brownie points!

 

I have to agre - if it ain't broke... Just do the belt and water pump - no new pulleys...

Except maybe a UD pulley for the accy.s

 

The dealer may not have a "kit" for it, but you should be able to buy the necessary parts from them regardless. If they tell you they can't sell them to you they are LYING.

 

Da P-Funk! In my line of work I have seen a lot of problems caused by trying to fix something that isn't broken, so ordinarily I would agree with you. However, considering the fact it will all be apart already and I have seen one such failure cause a car to die (on the side of the freeway no less, towing that home was a fun trip!), I figure it would be better to do it. I was just hoping for some info from someone who might have already done it.

midnightblue97, I got the parts numbers for the pulleys from the dealer. The only thing he didn't know about was a kit which included all the parts (pulleys and belt).

Based upon what I have found out vis a vis prices, I am going to get the pulleys and belt from the dealer and the other parts elsewhere (big difference in price between $105 dealer water pump and $45 local parts house, or even a $25 rebuilt unit).