I recently went through an ordeal where the truck would over heat. Also I had oil and coolant mixing. My first thought was head gasket. I did a little research, ran a compression test, and decided that my timing chain must have eaten through the timing cover. I figured I'd share some images and some thoughts. This is not meant to be an instruction manual, there are plenty good ones available already.

First off I'll say that I did the timing cover change without removing the oil pan or the head. One mishap I had in doing this was I crinkled up the part of the head gasket that hangs over the timing cover. I ended up cutting it off and replacing it with some Toyota FPIG. No oil leaks so far. This portion of the gasket has nothing to do with compression thank god.


First Image: Everyone always says set to top dead center. Well how the hell do you do that??? Here you go.

You need to look at your crankshaft pulley and the position of your distributor rotor.



Set the notch on the Crankshaft Pulley to the 0 that is scribed on the Oil Pump. You can do this by cranking starter or manually with a breaker bar. While doing this check position of rotor.



Rotor should be at 1st spark plug or somewhere between 10 and 11 o'clock if you were to liken it to a clock. Mark position of rotor for reference. Also mark the distributor body itself. You'll notice above that my distributor was diagonal in respect to the horizontal plane of the valve cover. You want to mount your distributor the same way you took it off.


Here's a pic of the nasty oil/coolant mixture all over my poor valves.



Here was an early sanity check. You should be able to see the top of the driver's side chain guide. As you can see there was nothing there.



Once I got my timing cover off I got better look. Driver's side guide broken and chain loose.



You can see that the broken guide did not quite get into my oil pan luckily for me.



Here's the damage to the timing cover itself. You can see the chain dug damn near a quarter inch into the aluminum. It might be hard to see in the pic, but there is a small fracture in one of the groves which caused the mixing of oil and coolant. The crack is right around the casing for the impeller of the water pump.



Here's my new chain, sprockets, guides, and tensioner.



Here's a better look at the steel reinforced driver's side guide. No more plastic crap.



Look you can see the guide now.



Here's a quick pic of the new timing cover, water pump, and oil pump.I ended up putting in a new radiator and hoses as well.




If anyone has any questions/comments feel free to post them.

 

I just went through the change on my 22RE a couple months ago and appreciated as much visual clarification as I could find prior to starting. Thanks for posting and great job!

 

thanks for posting these pics.

someone just quoted me $2200 to replace a leaking timing cover with a new kit incl. water pump. he said 13 hrs labor. idk what to do. =(

 

If it includes new chain, sprockets, guides, cover, water pump then that quote is right on in my mind. 13 hours labor seems fair as I would assume a shop would drop the oil pan and might even remove the head.

Is this your only vehicle? You can damn near get another truck for $2200 so that option is out the window unless there is some sort of sentimental value attached. If this is not your only vehicle and you'd like a project for a weekend or couple weekends or however you decide to do it, then I'd spend $600 or less in parts and do it yourself. I went really cheap with my parts because my truck is basically for hardware store runs and dump runs. You can get cheap kits on ebay that include the cover, chain, water pump, oil pump, guides, sprockets.