Timing belt on Land Rover 2.5Dt

   I had to wait until the morning chill wore off today. It was in the mid 40's until around 1100. After a quick lunch I headed out and installed the camshaft oil seal. Since I didn't have the proper tool I used a machinist hammer and a depth guage to get the correct 1mm below the face depth. I checked it in about 8 places around the seal to make sure it was even.
    After that I put on the camshaft timing gear and then using the manual I went about setting the timing. Man, was it fussy! You have to have the timing pins out set the belt in place on the gears and set the tensioner, rotate the crankshaft 2 rotations and retighten the tensioner, reinstall the flywheel pin and see if it was still in time. The hardest part is when you put the belt on the crank and then the cam you can't get the slack out of it. By the time you get the belt around the pump gear the cam has moved the mark off by a half a tooth! Then once the tension is applied both the cam and pump are out 1 tooth or more. Frelling frustrating.
     I finally took the slack up by moving the cam and pump to the next tooth on the belt and when it was put on the pump and tensioned it lined up perfectly. Even after the 2 revolution and reset of the tensioner it was good. The pins all lined up and I went to torque the tensioner for the last time.

     That's went things went wrong. The nuts just kept on spinning and not tightening up I could feel that they were not "right". So I was thinking the stud had stripped in the aluminum and that would be a major setback. Luckily the stud came out with the nut and the nut had stripped threads on the stud.

     Of course I didn't have any M8x1.25 studs.....so I was off to my FLAPS. They had some but not the correct length. I bought 2 and would run a die down them and cut them to length. Or so I thought. Automotive studs are hardened. I couldn't hold them and re-thread them. Again disheartened at the "nothing is easy with this" attitude I changed out of my stinky oily work clothes into something clean and put on my motorcycle gear and rode to another auto parts place about 6 miles away.
     Ernie's Western Auto is a NAPA dealer and they had the correct studs for my repair. I was lucky as they had just came in the day before! So I bought 4, even though I needed 2.

    Going back home I changed back into the oily stinky clothes and went back at it. First putting in one of the studs and locking the tensioner in place. Then removing the other stud and replacing it. Next was 2 rotations of the crank and a check of all the timing pins. By George I'd done it!

     Putting the gasket on the timing cover with the Permatex anerobic goo and then the timing cover was preceded by setting the final torque on the camshaft gear, 30ft-lb IIRC.