How many hours to change a timing belt?

a 1998 toyota avalon? I have been

I don't know what the "book" calls for, but if IRRC, on my Corolla, it was five hours. Add, the pump, they'll probably add another hour or two.

If you are doing it yourself, fine. If you plan to have a mechanic do it....esp. a TOY dealer...be aware that they usually charge you for the water pump as if it is a completely separate repair, despite the fact that they have most of it "done" when they disassemble for the timing belt.

A few people have posted that their mechanic HAS NOT done the "whole separate charge..." A number of others have posted that their mechanics HAVE charged....

In my personal experience, both my toy dealer and my indy mechanic said they WOULD charge a complete and separate charge. Of course, my local TOY dealer charges some 20 percent above the TOY MSRP on parts purchased over the counter, also...

the flat rate time to replace a timing belt and water pump is around 5 or 6 hours.

I don't know what the "book" calls for, but if IRRC, on my Corolla, it was five hours. Add, the pump, they'll probably add another hour or two.

If you are doing it yourself, fine. If you plan to have a mechanic do it....esp. a TOY dealer...be aware that they usually charge you for the water pump as if it is a completely separate repair, despite the fact that they have most of it "done" when they disassemble for the timing belt.

Of the 50 Toyota dealers I personally visited, only one charged separately for the water pump when done in conjuction with the timing belt, and they are no longer in business.

And that's the cause and effect in one paragraph.

If all their customers are totally "car ignorant" a dealer can get away with charging them for the two procedures separately like that. But it is a form of... Well, theft is too strong a word, but fraud might not be. It's certainly being less than honest.

Try that on too many people who /do/ know what is involved in both jobs, and word gets around that their customers are being seriously overcharged on a regular basis. And business will dry up. For a small dealer in a small town, the bad publicity that this style of "Customer Service" generates can be the kiss of death.

Only big dealers in big cities can get away with that - because the city is simply too large for 2+ Million people to all get the word. They've tried pulling stuff like that on me at the initial service write-up or estimate, but quickly adjusted the price to be competitive when I pointed out their "error" in the labor hours...

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PS: Ray, watch the quoting - you didn't > mark any of Tim's stuff.

The dealer that went out of business also happened to have the worst customer relations score of any Toyota dealer in the U.S. and so attracted the attention of Toyota's U.S. president and all of the executive VP's. They were a major thorn in my side because one of the ways my performance was evaluated was by customer relations scores, and they ignored all of my advice. Having them close up shop in the middle of the night before various state agencies descended on them turned out to be a blessing!

I don't know what happened with the quoting - it is usually automatic unless the previous poster used a non-standard format (I don't know whether or not this was the case here). Thanks for the heads up!

Having changed the timing belt, water pump, and everything else that touches the belt on my '95 Avalon, the job would have been very straight forward if I had the special tools to hold the crank pulley and camshaft pulleys. Rental of a 3/4" impact wrench, destroying the camshaft pulleys, and the extra time needed would have paid for the tools, but I could not locate them and had no way of fabricating them.

Tom

You personally visited 50 Toyota dealers? Physically went to those dealers? For what purpose, and where were those 50 dealers?

When he tells you, you'll respect his knowledge of Toyotas even more.

I probably will, but I'd still like to know.

I ask some dealers if I could rent a pulley holder from them, but they all said they didn't have any and that they used nothing but an impact wrench. Since I didn't have the latter, I made a pulley holder out of a 1/2" thick bar of steel and a couple of metric bolts (and broke 2 thread taps in the process).

Some people get the pulley bolt out by wedging a wrench between the pulley bolt and the ground and blipping the starter with the ignition system disabled, but I've heard it doesn't work with Honda engines because they spn counterclockwise.

And you know that how? Most owners of dealers don't micromanage the shops. They have shop foremen to do that.

If they say, "we're going to charge you separately for changing the water pump, even though it is really part of another operation, and we're not really doing the work," I don't see where there is fraud.

It can be the kiss of death. I suspect that there were other problems with the service department, as well.

Sometimes these errors really are errors.

Jeff

Unfortunately, my Local TOY dealer has been in business since the mid-80s and enjoys a virtual monopoly in a small town with a unusually well-off population for this region....which is why they charge some

20 percent over the TOY MSRP on all parts sales.

This is the same dealer that when a friend took in his 85 Camry a few years ago, they whined and said they were having a lot of trouble finding the problem because the car had no computer to tell them where to start -- based on the symptoms, I guessed fuel pump and you know, it turned out I was right....LOL.

Now, I also mentioned my indy mechanic said he would also charge separately for this timing belt/water pump thing. Well, that's his right. He has fixed some half-dozen or some minor-ish repairs for free also when my wife/daughter/son or I have stopped in without notice with "some strange noise...part falling off...flat tire, etc....," so I can't fault him much. He also has been in business since 1960, has more business than he can handle, and has tried to retire several times, but can't "stay away."

I personally visited closer to 75 Toyota dealers but spent time in the service department (any where from 4 to hundreds of hours) of around 50 while I was employed by Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. The purpose of the visits to the service departments was to monitor their service operations, meet with customers who had problems with their cars, and to fix those problem cars.

Unfortunately, my Local TOY dealer has been in business since the mid-80s and enjoys a virtual monopoly in a small town with a unusually well-off population for this region....which is why they charge some

20 percent over the TOY MSRP on all parts sales.

This is the same dealer that when a friend took in his 85 Camry a few years ago, they whined and said they were having a lot of trouble finding the problem because the car had no computer to tell them where to start -- based on the symptoms, I guessed fuel pump and you know, it turned out I was right....LOL.

Now, I also mentioned my indy mechanic said he would also charge separately for this timing belt/water pump thing. Well, that's his right. He has fixed some half-dozen or some minor-ish repairs for free also when my wife/daughter/son or I have stopped in without notice with "some strange noise...part falling off...flat tire, etc....," so I can't fault him much. He also has been in business since 1960, has more business than he can handle, and has tried to retire several times, but can't "stay away."

************* Hmmm, I don't know why, but the ">" doesn't appear when I reply to your posts so I just used asterisks to denote the end of your post and the beginning of mine.

IMHO, small town dealers who pull the stuff you're describing stay small-time because of those tactics, and having a dealer like that in town is a great opportunity for a competent independent shop.

The dealer I called on who pulled that stuff was in a metropolitan market and sold 3 brands. He incurred the wrath of all three automakers, the state attorney general, and the TV investigative news reporter that got ripped off on his personal car.