I did my timing belt this weekend and had surprisingly few problems. I used the article at endwrench in the archives section. It's a four page article called 2.2 Liter Single Overhead Cam Timing Belt Replacement. However, I have a few little tricks to share that I have harvested in other places on the internet and from my experience and mistakes that I figured I'd pass on. Keep in mind that I have a 2.2, which is not an interference engine. If you have a 2.5, you must be careful not to let the cams turn since you do have an interference engine.
Pulling the radiator gives a lot more clearance, and since you really should do the water pump, you will already have to drain the system anyways. Once the system is drained and the fans pulled off, which is a minimum for clearance, pulling the radiator is only a matter of two hoses and two eaasily accessible bolts. I was glad I had it out of there.
To lock the engine in place to get the bolt off the crank, you don't need to do any fancy stuff with crafting a special tool, or filling a cylinder with rope, or wedging screwdrivers in stuff. I simply put the car in fifth gear, put the emergency brake on as far up as I could pull it, put a three foot long pipe on my 18 inch long breaker bar, for a total of only about three feet of leverage, and crank on it. The engine still turned about a quarter rotation before the bolt broke loose, but I had it off in seconds.
If you are doing the seals on the cams, which I would strongly suggest doing, break the bolts loose on the cam pulleys before you take the timing belt off. In fact, Once you get the covers off to access the pulleys, break those loose immediately while you still have the engine locked in place from doing the crank pulley. Only break them loose, then snug them back up. don't allow the pulley to come off with the timing belt still tight.
Even though I meant to, I forgot and did not follow this advice. So I had free spinning cams when I went to loosen the bolts on the pulleys. :~( So since I would have had to do the hydraulic tensioner stuff twice, to put the belt back on just to get them off I devised another method. I wrapped the OLD belt around the pulley, then pinched it back on itself like a strap wrench, then I took the two free lengths of belt with the loop made by them and wrapped them clockwise around the pulley, and hooked the loop around the crank sprocket. This works very well since the teeth on the two halves interlock with each other. That held it well enough that I got my breaker to break those bolts free with no further issue. With an interference engine, you'd have to be strategic about where you pinch the belt to get it to hold without first having to take the slack out by turning a camshaft that you are not supposed to turn.
I'd also suggest replacing the water pump since you have to take off the timing belt to do it, and doing all this again later would just suck. The only thing to note here is that some of them don't come with the rubber zig-zag rubber on the side of the pump. You have to take that from the old one. It damps vibration and also helps keep a good seal in the timing belt area so junk doesn't get in there and screw up your timing belt. You also might as well replace your thermostat while in there. It is possible to replace that without doing the timing belt, but you do have to drain the system though. I've read to use gasket sealant there, but when I took my old pump off, there was none there, jsut the metal gasket, and it wasn't leaking. Makes me wonder what the engineers intended. The gasket stuff can't hurt though. Just makes it harder to get it off next time.
If you are not using a subaru belt, then you should mark the old belt where the timing marks are, then after removing that belt, transfer the marks to the new belt before sticking it on the car. I used a subaru belt, but didn't realize the marks were already there until I had already made the marks on the old belt. I used my wife's fingernail polish that she has since she was twelve and has no intension of using again. Later I realized that it might not have been the best chemical to use. Fortunately since the new one had the marks, I won't lose sleep over it.
For refilling the system, I was able to get the system a lot more full on the inital fill than I had previously been able to just by using one simple trick. I 'milked' the top coolant hose. I filled the radiator up all the way, then I would squeeze and relase that hose slowly. I could hear the check valve/bypass valve in the thermostat opening and closing and letting coolant into the bottom of the engine. Whereas I'd had to top off my system after running about a half dozen times before, this addition to the method made it so I only had to top off after running the engine once.
The torque specs that I used for my 98 2.2 liter were 29 ft-lb for all the tensioners and idler pulleys, 100 ft-lbs for the crank bolt, and
50 ft-lb for the cam bolts. The first two specs are actual subaru specs, or nearly so. The last one was a guess since I couldn't find it anywhere. Someone on NASIOC reasoned that since the Crank was about 100 ft-lb, and the cams were turning about half as fast, they should be 50 ft-lbs. I don't agree with the spinning speed having anything to do with it. But I do know that bolt size does, and their reasoning reminded me of that. Coincidentally, the cross sectional area of the two bolts is about a 1:2 ratio( at least to my eyes since I didn't actually measure and calculate. So I used half as much torque. In reality that is only valid if they have the same thread pitch, and are made of the same material, but for lack of a better torque spec, I thought 50 was as good as I would get. As for the 100 ft-lb being an 'about', different places list it as 95 or 115. So I figured 100 was a good compromise.The parts that I got were the timing belt, the two accessory drive belts, two cam seals, crank seal, water pump, water pump gasket, thermostat, thermostat gasket, and bypass hose. That was 276.95 at the dealer for everything but the accessory belts, then another 14 bucks for hte two belts at a local parts place. I think One gallon of coolant was 8 bucks and distilled water was under a buck for the gallon. So in the end it was right around 300 bucks. Not bad considering the 900 to 1200 estimtes I've heard for all that work.
I took about eight hours. But I was also helping my neighbor with his cars, BSing with the neighbors, watching the kids occasionally, eating lunch, breaking for rain, playing with the kids, and taking my time to ensure I didn't miss any more steps after I missed the cam bolt loosening step. I also dropped a bolt for the left side cover into the front cover after I had installed the front cover and had to take it back off and go find my magnetic pickup tool to get it back out. Then I rotated the driver side fan 90 degrees, which made me think it was the passenger side fan (because of plug placement) until the bolt holes didn't line up. If I had to do it again and had a dry garage, I think I could do it in about 2 or three hours.
Hope this helps someone, Bill