Dreaded stuborn Crank bolt

@keith … good photo. Your mechanical design skills? A+. If I posted a similar photo of the one I made I think pretty much everyone would say: George_San_Jose 's mechanical design skills? D+. lol … Seriously that stick design of mine, it’s an embarrassment. But it did work one time at least.

Thanks, but if yours works, its just as good as mine. It works or it doesn’t.

I found the same thing you did, once I got the pulley to hold still, it didn’t take much effort to loosen the bolt.

With a photo, I can understand now what you guys are talking about. If all else fails, I will be resorting to this homemade tool. Thanks for sharing.

To locate the bolt holes, put your (8x1.5x45mm IIRC) into the holes on the pulley. Align the pulley bold access hole to the pulley bolt. The wack the board with a hammer just enough to make an impression of the hex heads in the wood.

Drill out the center of the hex impression.

Those bolt holes also have a second purpose. The factory special service tool for holding the harmonic balancer also uses those two holes for attachment, not that I’m suggesting one for a diyer who would seldom use it. Although I’m only a diyer myself, I happen to have a few different varieties of this SST for various Toyota engines. I would suggest using the Lisle big socket to loosen and maybe the Schley 64300 to torque the bolt. Of course, I realize the OP might not want to spend the money for more tools and that’s fine.

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Ok, with working 2 jobs and life, I was finally able to get the bolt out with the help of a Milwauke impact wrench that my dad brought me that he borrowed from someone. Now, in the rebuilding stage of the project, I replaced the water pump and all of the pulleys (got the kit) and am stuck on the belt. I have done a few timing belts in the past few years, and I know they sometimes are a but to get on, but I don’t think they should be this bad. I haven’t even pulled the pin on the plunger (new plunger, fyi) and I don’t have enough room to slip the belt on the pulley. I have NO slack in the belt around the other pulleys, checked that several times already. Is it possible the wrong belt was placed in the kit, or is there a special trick in getting this thing on there? Really running out of patience on this one.

I recall that installing a timing belt over the tensioner pully last usually worked best.

Tried that. What I ended up doing was actually removing one of the bolts from the tensioner so that it would tilt slightly and slipped it on that way. I then put the bolt back and tightened it.

Have you pushed the tensioner to its max open position and locked it down first?

redneckred:
Have you tried removing the starter, and then wedging something between the ring gear teeth and bell housing? That will prevent any turning when you then use a long breaker bar and socket.

[Update: Thanks ColtHero for calling out that redneckred already got the bolt out. I read too quickly and missed that.]

Sounds like you got the belt on, but is it tensioned properly? Maybe you need to measure belt deflection now?

And I know you already got the crank bolt off, but I was going to vote for removing the starter and jamming the ring gear teeth. That has always worked for me (to keep the crank from turning), and what I’ve found is what fits in there almost perfectly is one of those 12" black crowbars (“Wonderbar”?). You stick it in there with the crowbar teeth perpendicular to the ring gear teeth, and it sits snugly between the teeth and the case at about a 45-degree angle. Then you just attach your socket with enough extensions to get past the fender, add your breaker bar, sleeve your 4’ long steel pipe over that, and literally just lean on the pipe handle with all that leverage and that bolt comes loose like “butt-ah” every time.

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I have always installed the belt before the tensioner, I didn’t think this was a worthy tip to offer you for post #27.

I don’t think that was meant to be a “tip for others”

I think he just said that’s how he did it

The remove-the-bolt-from-the-belt-tensioner-thing, I think I had to do that on my Corolla’s timing belt. As I recall I just had to loosen that bolt to free up some wiggle room, not totally remove it. It was a little frustrating when the timing belt would not slip on like it seemed like it should though, at first. At the time I was thinking my plan B would be to emove the sprockets, putting the timing belt on them, then installing the belt and sprockets together.