3.3L VG Timing Belt

[Rev_D21]

Sent my truck to the dealer to have the timing belt replaced. 97K on it so there's little to gain by waiting any longer. Also replacing the water pump with gasket, cam and crank seals and spark plugs. Also should be getting my cheap Ebay CAI from UPS today. It's a good day to be a D22 Frontier at this house.

[Rev_D21]

Timing belt done! Crank pulley was fused to the crank snout and didn't want to come off. The tech doing the work is a master tech who has been turning wrenches at a Nissan dealer since 1989 and I have known since 1997. I tipped him as well. The dealer was very happy to see this kind of work come through since everything is so slow across the entire automotive board. They gave me wholesale pricing on the parts having used the work there. Even with discounts this job ran me $1200 but that includes labor to do the spark plugs, cam and crank seals, water pump with gasket and a new crank pulley since the old one had to be destroyed to be removed.

I was told I dodged a bullet by doing this maintenance because the old belt had slacked since 2002 and was slapping the top of the timing cover. It did this enough to leave some pretty sizable wear marks on the cover. So my advice is don't go too far over 95k. I had planned on doing this service this year when I bought the truck back in March of 2011. It has 97k on it today.

Performance-wise. The MPGs I noticed were 2mpg higher than before and it's running very smooth. 19-20MPGs on the highway is what I am seeing. Most of my drives are 15 miles or more since I live in the country. The plugs at 97k were whopped. No one had replaced them before my taking ownership. The truck needed a lot of maintenance when I bought it and I have done a lot this past year. I am enjoying owning this truck despite it's short-comings. Don't treat it like you would an F350 Superduty Dually and you should be OK.

[lignorth]

I beat it feels great to have it done. Congrates.
I know when I replaced the belt, water pump, t-stat I felt a whole bunch better about taking it out
on longer trips into the desert.

[Rev_D21]

It does feel great. Feels like I purchased another 97,000 miles as long as everything else holds up.

[Rev_D21]

Everything is breaking in and the truck is smoother than it ever has been. MPGs are climbing as well. We have a lot of hills around here and some would drop my MPGs down to 4 while climbing. Now I haven't seen lower than 11mpg on the same hills. I couldn't be happier right now!