Timing Belt and Water Pump Replacement

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Well, I finally had to replace my timing belt (because my water pump
died) on my 1990 Legacy LS. Just a few notes from the job:

You don't have to remove the bolts on the bottom of the two fans.
You only have to loosen them enough to slide out the fans (the holes
at the bottom are slotted). The two bolts on the outside ends of
mine were rather hard to remove (leaves and junk built up and made
them hard to remove). The head of one of them broke off when I got
it about half way off.

The bolts on the end timing covers, that bolt into the rear timing
belt covers, screw into brass nuts that are set into the plastic
covers. My covers were original and two of the nuts just spun around
in the plastic. I had to break them out to get the covers removed.
New covers have nuts in square holes so they won't spin.

I fund a "new" method to remove the pulley and sprocket
bolts. Buy
one of these:
http://www.sears.com/sr/product/details ... etails.jsp?
BV_SessionID=@@@@0291978983.1034225732@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccfkadcgheimkh
mcehgcemgdffmdfil.0&vertical=TOOL?_id=00945530000&fromAuto=null&b
idsite=
The handle is only plastic, but I figured that since it is a
Craftsman tool I could replace it for free. You wrap the rubber
strap around the pulley (or sprocket) and it holds it place so you
can loosen the bolt. It works great and since it's rubber you
don't
have to worry about scratching anything.

Make sure you get a "real" Subaru timing belt that has marks
on it.
The marks make it easy to align the new belt with the sprockets. I
marked the sprockets on the edge of the sprocket because you
can't
see the teeth on the sprockets when the belt is in place. You'll
align the belt with a tooth in the left sprocket (facing the
engine), a tooth on the middle sprocket, and a "valley" on
the
sprocket on the right (facing the engine).

If you need to take off a sprocket the above tool works great. Note
the sprocket on the right side (facing the engine) has tabs on it
–
the other one doesn't.

When you tighten the pulley bolt make sure it is between 89-107 Nm
or 66-79 ft-lb. I think I've seen someone say 100 ft-lb (it's
really
100 Nm).

That's about all the "new" information I can add to this
job (there
are already a lot of posts with details on the order to do things).
I have Subaru Shop manuals, and the order that is specified in the
manuals to do things worked out great.