For me was my kids old Mazda Protege 5, had to do the water pump with it too. I used a Gates kit then the following year had to do the water pump again as it failed, just a pain. No real room and doing it twice soured my taste for it.
Opposing view: I vote the Toyota 2.2 as one of the easiest timing belt jobs, followed closely by the Honda J-series.
VW 1.6/2.0L diesels are fiddly as they have a lot of fine-tuning scope once the belt is on.
The modern Volvo 5cyls are easy, especially in the P3 cars which have heaps of room. Hard to get the water pump in and out in P1 cars due to the narrower chassis rail width, but still not a horrible job by any means.
I'd say 13-18 RDX. No P/S, lots of room.Funny that the J35 is universally considered one of the easier subjects... which brings up another question: which J35 equipped platform is easiest to service?
I vote the Saturn Vue. No power steering, more room to work than the existing 3.0, and no plastic engine covers to fight with.
That Alfa 164... in its DOHC variant form. Originally, at least, it was a 30,000 mile recommended interval. Partways disassembly of RH front suspension to do it, apparently. Also, do it, then 10,000 miles into the 30,000 mile interval - partways do it again, to retention the belt once it was in service for a bit. By comparison the SOHC Alfa V6 in the 164 was easier... and decent if you upgraded the oil-fed DETENSIONER with a later DOHC non oil fed TENSIONER.Memory has faded and it's been over a decade so they may only have seemed difficult at the time, but Maserati Biturbo and Alfa Romeo 164 get pretty involved. Newer Volvos like C70 and S40 take some time too with little room to work. The Lotus Elan with the Isuzu engine was pretty miserable due to access. Honda/Saturn 3.5 V6 in the SUV's and trucks aren't exactly easy but still ok since there is more room to work. The easier ones to do were Chevette, a Sequoia despite it being a V8, and the easiest has to be the Volvo 240 series.
Sounds like your shop is one that only does the bare minimum in order to keep costs low.My Subaru mechanic changed wife’s 2005 Legacy GT wagon with EJ25 turbo timing belt only for $300 in 2009. Guessing it was easy at least for him. 3hrs labor and cost of belt.
Maybe however it was changed out at 195k again and some tensioners and drive belts done. We kept car 14yrs/240k miles and dumped because it was leaking oil out all the oil lines for the turbo plumbing.Sounds like your shop is one that only does the bare minimum in order to keep costs low.
But really, replacing the timing belt only sounds like a terrible practice. At the minimum, do the tensioner and drive belts.
We had one guy that did the Subarus. He could do it with the tensioners and belts in a morning, easy. With a Winston hanging off his lip.Sounds like your shop is one that only does the bare minimum in order to keep costs low.
But really, replacing the timing belt only sounds like a terrible practice. At the minimum, do the tensioner and drive belts.
did they fail visual inspection at 100k miles as required per the tech manual which required the replacement?Somewhat off topic but I did the 2 timing belts in my (long gone) 1998 Goldwing 1500. Took about 6 hours from start to finish.