nelstomlinson

Yes. It's been too long, I can't remember the numbers in the manual or which of the three it was, but it was indeed one of those three connectors.

So far it's parked in a field, because he thinks it's too hard. It really doesn't look any harder than a timing belt, just a couple more steps. I'll see if he wants to open it up. If he does, it'll almost surely need a timing belt, etc.

A friend has a '99 with a replacement engine from Japan. He believes it needs a new oil pump. He's quite sure that this engine requires different parts than the original did, but "engine from Japan" is all the info he has. What am I looking for to identify that engine, and how do I search for parts to help him out?

And it's running. It turns out that there isn't a little square mark on the front of the crank cog, instead there's a little line on the tone ring in the back. _THAT'S_ what has to be lined up with the witness mark on the engine and with the line on the belt. The last one I did was the '02, and it did have that square mark.

I don't think we've ever done a Subie timing belt in just once, we have to do and redo every time.

The problem is that we don't do this every year, so we don't remember about the square mark versus the little arrow. We also just realized we forgot to pull the pin out of the tensioner, so we would have had to go back in there anyway! Oh, well, that's going to make redoing it way easier, so it's all working out.

This one is definitely not interference, we can bar the crank over with the cam in any position.

And my son just found a picture of the crank pulley properly lined up. We should have lined up the square mark, not the notch 90 degrees away from it. Oh, well, we'll do it again tomorrow.

We got the new timing belt in, and now when we try to crank it over it doesn't want to turn. We can bar it over by hand with no problem, if we take the spark plugs out it spins over quickly with the starter, but with the plugs in place it sounds as if the engine is kicking back against the starter. The Aisin waterpump kit was all made in Japan stuff except for the Mitsuboshi timing belt, which was from Thailand.

In the worst case, you're probably getting at least $300 worth of parts for the next one you buy.

The current water pump is an aftermarket already, we replaced that around '17 I think. I need to get the maintenance log out of the glovebox and re-read when we did what on this one. I think what you're seeing that looks wrong is the broken belt is bunched up above and left of the cam pulley. It does look a little like the toothed idler, I guess.

The kits I'm finding have GMB idlers, any good?

It was a mitsuboshi belt that broke. We took the toothed idler off, and that's definitely what broke the belt: it's seized up solid. Pretty sure that one was factory original.

Where is a good place to source a high quality complete kit with belt, tensioner, all the idlers and maybe a water pump too?

The timing belt was broken. I don't think we had even 40k miles on it. The toothed idler doesn't turn, so I suspect it seized up and snapped the belt. Anyway, we'll need to get a complete kit on the way.