This article is ©2006 by Kevin Miller. I take no responsibility for the accuracy of this procedure; proceed at your own risk.
Many thanks to francismartin for his excellent writeup that allowed me to change my belt.
As far as I can tell this procedure will work on any 2.0 engine, the different engine codes don't seem to make a difference in the timing belt. Mine is an AEG.
1. Park your car and let the engine cool down. Remove the engine cover and the front bumper. (If you need help with this, you should probably stop now.) :D Loosen the lugnuts on the front passenger wheel; the wheel's about to come off.
2. Take a look down the left (passenger) side of the engine where you'll be doing your work. You can already see the ribbed accessory belt (purple) running over the alternator (red); it's held in place by the tensioner (blue). And behind that plastic cover (green) is the timing belt itself. Notice the fuel return lines that are gonna be in your way for the whole job. (I couldn't get mine removed, but maybe you can!) Also notice the containers for engine coolant, power steering fluid, and windshield washer fluid (yellow, back to front). You'll be unbolting the first two, but you won't be actually removing any of them.
3. It's time to remove the accessory belt. Look again at the tensioner and find this little tab sticking up.
Grab the tab with an open-ended wrench. Use a 15mm wrench or just an adjustable wrench. Then pull it towards you (toward the front of the car) and like magic, the accessory belt will become loose! While holding the wrench forward, pull the belt off the alternator. Then it comes right out.
4. Now you need to remove the tensioner itself. It's held on by these three 13mm bolts and then comes right out.
5. Now that that's gone, it's time for the timing belt cover. You need to get these two hoses out of the way (red); the looparound one just unclips and folds out of the way, while the short one needs to be pulled off the little spout. Once those are clear, unclip the two clips on the cover (blue, front and back) and pull the cover up and out.
6. Now we see the enemy.
Now raise the car as high as possible with jacks on either side. It needs to be all the way up because you need to fit two more jacks under the engine block in a bit. We actually had to put planks of wood under our lifting jack just so we could get the jacks themselves to their maximum height!
Once it's up, remove the right wheel. You should also remove the plastic shroud around the wheel; I didn't, and I was working around it all day. It's held in by 5-6 screws from front to back.
7. Now that the car's jacked up, you need to get the jacks under the engine and transmission, with blocks of wood to reduce the pressure. Remember that, unless you get it exactly right, you'll need to jack up the car *higher* to give you clearance, place the jacks, and then lower it. This is a tricky part of the process, but just tinker with it and you'll get it in there. Make sure the jacks are steady. They should be placed under the center of the engine block (where the oil drain plug is) and the center of the transmission, as pictured.
8. Drain the engine coolant from the drain toward the front driver side of the radiator. Stick a bucket under the spout and turn the handle with some pliers to start the flow. Unscrew the coolant tank lid to really start the coolant flowing.
9. While that's draining, unbolt the power steering reservoir. You can see it's bolted on with an odd clip/screw combination that holds some sort of feeder line (red). Unclip the line, then screw off the black plastic clip/screw. Then remove the screw it was screwed onto, and the reservoir will finally be loose.
10. Also remove the two screws holding down the coolant reservoir, at the back.
Note: I didn't have to touch the windshield washer reservoir.
11. Now it's time to remove the engine mount. This consists of two parts: a mount bracket, which connects to the car frame, and the engine mount itself, which connects to the engine and plugs into the bracket. Start with the bolt (blue) that is under the power steering reservoir.
There's two more bolts on either side of the bracket that come out. Remember to keep organized which bolts go where!
Finally, two bolts connect the mount bracket to the mount, under those fuel lines.
Now you can wiggle the bracket out from under the reservoirs and the hoses!
12. Before you tackle the mount itself, you should remove the bottom accessory belt pulley and the lower timing belt cover. First comes the pulley, Here's how we did it:
(Yes, I know my wheel shroud's been ripped to pieces.) :D
Get a large strap wrench around the pulley, then brace it against the forward pulley to keep the pulley stationary while you work on the four 6mm hex bolts. (We remove the bolts with an Allen wrench, but it was painful on the fingers - a hex attachment for your ratchet is highly recommended, if you can find one.) Undo the four bolts and the pulley comes right off. Here's what's underneath:
Now the lower timing belt cover comes off. Remove the two tiny screws pictured above, the two screws above that, and one more at the top (just under the mount). Then the cover comes off in two pieces:
Voila! The timing belt is finally, completely exposed.
13. Have a beer.
14. Now for the mount itself. Here's a picture of it once it's out of the car, so you can see where the bolts are. The arrow points approximately upward once it's in the car:
And here it is in the car, from underneath:
One of the bolts you can see here. The other you can feel and kind of see from top. The third bolt is the real bitch. You're never gonna see it, just kind of feel it as you wiggle the ratchet in there. (I couldn't even squeeze the camera in to take a picture of where it is!)
You'll need a very short socket extension to remove this bolt; there is NOT much clearance in there, so a longer extension won't work. They sell extensions that are just about the length of a regular ratchet socket, an inch or two.
15. Undo the three bolts. Just leave them in the mount; they can stay there. The bottom bolt is easy to remove completely, but remember to reinsert it in the mount before you position the mount back next to the engine! Otherwise you'll have to wriggle it back in later.
16. Now here's where we took the mount out of the car. This was a pain in the ass times ten. We didn't have a hoist or any way to raise or lower the engine, so we just had to work at it for about 30 minutes before it came out in a twisting fashion from the top-back of the engine bay.
The thing is, I'm not sure we had to. In retrospect, it may have been possible to just keep the mount in place and shove it aside while working to remove the belt; then loop the belt AROUND the mount to get it out of the car. I haven't heard of anyone else doing this, but it's something that occurred to me after all was said and done, that might have saved a lot of time.
Important: If you do remove the mount, remember exactly HOW you positioned it to remove it. Otherwise it'll be just as hard, if not harder, to fit it back in there when you're done.
17. Before you go any further, MARK AND MATCH. Use white-out or nail polish to mark the belt and the engine where it touches each pulley. I forgot to check whether dad had white-out before we started, so purple nail polish it was!
Also mark the direction of the timing belt so you don't get it reversed. Then, place the new timing belt right next to the old one and make the exact same marks. That way you'll be SURE you've got it right. Don't worry about Top Dead Center (TDC) or anything like that; as long as the timing belt goes on exactly like it came off, you're in great shape.
18. Now for the reason you went to all this trouble! Time to swap out the timing belt. The key to the timing belt is its tensioner, which unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of (Doh!). You can see it in this picture (red):
See how it actually loops BEHIND the timing belt. It bolts to the engine and then pivots in place to apply pressure to the belt and keep it tense.
The tensioner has two indicator marks that stick up off the side of it - a bent tab and a "V" - and are spring-loaded relative to each other. When the tensioner is fully tense, these indicators will line up. When it's out of the car, they'll spring apart. Take a look at the tensioner inside the car to get an idea what it looks like, then undo the single bolt holding it to the engine and remove it.
Once it's out, you'll get a much better idea how it works. The center part of the tensioner rotates freely; if you turn the central portion while holding it in place, you'll see how the indicator marks come together.
19. As soon as the tensioner is removed, the timing belt will be loose and can come right out.
20. The water (coolant) pump is one of the pulleys that the timing belt loops around. Here it is, dead center:
Place a bucket under the car to catch all the extra coolant that's gonna dump out. The pump is held in there by 2 or 3 bolts, then comes out. It's a surprisingly tight fit (it's water tight, after all) so you'll need to work at it for a couple minutes. Then it (and a whole bunch of coolant) comes pouring out.
You're done removing stuff! Time to start putting it back together. Everything goes back in the reverse order, pretty much.
21. Put the new water pump in.
22. Put on the new timing belt, and slide in the tensioner at the same time. It's a snug fit even before the tensioner is set.
23. Turn the tensioner to tighten the belt. We did this thusly: Dad reached in from the top with a pair of bent-nose pliers and twisted the center portion of the tensioner, while I reached in from the bottom and felt the indicator marks come together. Once they were completely together, we turned the bolt and locked the tensioner in place.
24. Insert the mount bolts and then wriggle the mount into the car. (This took us over an hour, sad to say.)
25. Next is the lower timing belt cover and lower accessory belt pulley, followed by the mount bracket. Then screw the power steering and coolant reservoirs back down. Make sure you've closed the coolant valve from where you drained it earlier, then fill the engine with coolant.
26. Finally, bolt on the accessory belt tensioner, and loop the accessory belt back the way it started. You'll need to pull the tensioner tab forward with the wrench again in order to get the belt all the way on. Then release the tab and you're done!
27. Say a long, hard prayer, double-check your steps, then turn the key.