Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen Edwin
There's a lot to be said for Clifford Pope's method. Cut the lower belt cover. such that it can be removed and replaced without disturbing the crankshaft pulley bolt. It has been discussed in the forum. I understand no problem has been experienced from ingress of anything.
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I endorse that!
I've used it on several cars and must have done at least 300,000 miles with no evidence of anything getting in. In fact, the opposite, because any potentially harmful oil leak is easily spotted.
Early on I tried to take care to cut the plastic and then tape it up, but later I didn't bother and just left the lower section missing and the pulley visible.
There's a substantial cover under the front of the engine so it would be almost impossible for any road debris to get in.
It of course eliminates the only significant difficulty and delay in the belt change process.
Another short cut is to avoid any fuss over timing marks by simply stopping the engine, making three snopake marks on the belt and pulley teeth at each pulley, transposing the marks to the new belt laid flat on top of the old on the bench, and then fitting the new belt so the new marks align with the pulleys.
You can of course then turn the engine to TDC and observe that the timing marks are all correctly aligned. But if you were confident that the timing was correct before than it will still be correct.