Okay, I split this out of the RFR Trials event thread to bump an update.
On Monday, Cory and I attacked the car w/ the intent of swapping the timing covers. We got about halfway done, but were foiled because the sever underbonnet heat rendered the right-side exhaust cam gear bolt fused. We were actually slipping the timing trying to torque it off!
According to Cory's tech friend at Subaru, that's not all that unusual, and the normal solution is to simply
shatter the timing gear and replace it.
So, we stopped for the night, Tuesday morning I put in an order for a new gear and bolt at Lithia.
Wednesday came, and good ol' Don at Lithia called me... my parts were in a day early!
So after work, Cory, Matt and I were back at it. This time we used Cory's 2 foot long chain wrench to hold the gear, and put a big ass breaker bar on the bolt and got it loose... of course the chain wrench ruined the gear, but at least we didn't have to take an air hammer to it. Things looked good to go. We swapped the rear timing cover, and started reinstalling all the gears.
That's when we noticed, one of the idler pulley bolts was stripped out in the block.
Like *way* stripped out. Stupid grade 8 bolts into an aluminum block. Looks like someone either cross threaded it, or simply over torqued it. I don't believe Gruppe-S would have ever had that pulley off, so I have to think it was screwed up by S-Squared when they originally assembled the motor.
And instead of fixing it, all they did was goup a bunch of thread locker on it.
So, we started looking into tapping the hole for a larger bolt. We got the tap, the replacement bolt... but as if turns out, we needed to drill the hole larger, which is something we just wouldn't be able to do w/o pulling the radiator and A/C condenser, which would require an r134 collection setup. So, instead we retapped for the factory size bolt to clean up the few threads that were left, then got a longer bolt and reinstalled the pulley into the virgin threads deep in the hole. It seemed to snug up pretty well, so I think we'll be okay.
By now Matt had left, so it was up to Cory and I to descipher the marks we put on the timing belt. It was actually more of a PITA that I expected, but in the end the belt was on with the crank and all cams properly aligned.
Cory had to bounce, so I finished up installing the belt guides and outter timing covers, then the I/C pipe we had to remove, the radiator fans, and the coolant lines. And when I was done I only had one spare bolt left over! (Seriously, I had one of the center timing cover bolts left over, but I had a bolt installed in every location that was listed in the service manual... how does that happen!?)
I crossed my fingers and started up the motor, and aside from the massive up-pipe leak I've still got, the motor seemed to run correctly.
So, if SubyDude/Bosal ever get their act together and get my my up-pipe today or tomorrow (should have been here on *Tuesday*), I'll make it to this weekend's autocross.