make sure they replace all of the idler pulleys with the timing belt. worth the piece of mind IMO. when IAG did mine, i think they only replaced 2 of them, but in hindsight i wish i would have had them just do all 4 of them. i worry about an old pulley siezing up, fucking the timing belt, and ruining the motor. It's happened before to other people.
God, this is so ironic.
So yeah. I pulled into Starbucks on the morning of Feb 21st, turned the car off, and heard an odd light clanking sound right as it shut off. it was brief and faint and thought it was another car in the lot, didn't think anything of it and went inside for coffee. came back out, tried to start the car and CLACK CLACK *insert other bad rotating noises*. wtf. popped the hood, checked the oil, checked for leaks, everything LOOKED fine under the hood. tried starting it again, no dice. wont start but sounded normal when cranking (clacking sound went away). got towed home and didn't touch it for a week because i was swamped at work and had no time.
finally tore it apart a week later and found my problem. idler pulley failure. specifically the cog gear idler pulley. the bearing in it basically exploded, threw little ball bearings and shrapnel all over the place, and threw the timing all out of whack on the passenger side head. The belt jumped about 5-6 teeth on the passenger side.
i feared the worst. that i bent all my valves and now the motor has to come apart for service
. so i decided, since the failure basically happened right as the motor spun down with no load, and that i only tried to start it a few times, maybe i got lucky.
so i ordered a new timing belt kit from Gates part number TCK328 (includes new idler pulleys, a new tensioner, and a new belt), and new accessory belts from Gates. less than $200 for all the parts shipped to my door from amazon. the Gates timing belt kit is a steal. it uses all the same pulleys as OEM (literally the same, same mfg, markings, etc) and includes a new belt for less than half the cost of the discount online suby dealer.
so today was the first day i had some free time, and wasn't raining or freezing cold. So I tackled it.
I removed the old timing belt
I removed all of the old idler pulleys (they were all bad and made noise)
Installed the new timing belt and pulleys
Checked, double checked, triple checked timing marks
Rotated engine and re-checked marks
Re-installed timing belt guides and gapped them with the gates plastic tool.
Re-installed timing covers and accessories (one broken timing cover bolt grrr)
Installed new accessory belts
Re-installed radiator fans.
I was able to replace everything without removal of the radiator or even removing the radiator hoses (I didn't want to deal with refilling and bleeding air out of the cooling system). Probably would have been a little easier with removing everything, but I don't like messing with fluids if I don't have to.
Then the moment of truth...
Fired right up first try! Engine sounds quieter in the engine bay than it did before. No obvious sounds that make me think anything is wrong. All the temps and pressures looked fine. Went for a 20-30 min drive and everything feels 100% normal. Still hits about 20psi boost (I'm tuned for it) and it doesn't feel noticeably slower or anything.
I feel really lucky. I still have my appointment with IAG in about a week that I made for a possible valve job. I think I'm going to keep the appointment and just have them run a compression test and give it a once over and some other maintenance stuff.