How To Replace Timing Belt Part 1 1995-97 Dodge Intrepid

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1AAuto. I want to help you save time and money preparing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly -- that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

This video is Part 1 of a two part series. We're going to replace the timing belt in this '97 Dodge Intrepid with a 3.5 Liter V6. Tools you'll need for this repair -- jack and jack stands. You'll need a catch pan, 10, 13, and 15mm sockets with ratchet and extensions ... and you will need some long extensions to get to a couple of the bolts. You'll need a breaker bar -- or something that you can get some good leverage on to get the bolt off the crankshaft pulley -- a torque wrench, a chain or a belt wrench, a 3 jaw gear puller, 18mm wrench, pliers, and a flat blade screwdriver.

Okay, start out -- use a 10mm wrench and disconnect your negative battery cable. I just want to note was on the passenger side right here -- the radiator drain --and you should be able to use your hands and get up in here. Reach in there with both my hand and then use pliers and get the radiator fluid going. Okay so you can see here I twist it and the radiator fluid starts flowing. And reach in there try and twist it a little more and get the radiator fluid going faster. Now just take your radiator cap off. That allows air into the system, lets it drain a little faster. While the radiator is draining, you can start disassembling the top. There is a bar that goes across the top that has your hood latch, four 13mm bolts. That comes up, and put it out of the way.

15mm wrench -- loosen this nut on your serpentine tensioner. Then there's a nut way down there on your V-belt tensioner. Use a pair of pliers and you pinch the upper radiator hose clamp, and pull it back, and remove the hose. There are four bolts that hold the AC condenser, which is the radiator looking thing in front of the radiator here. You can see I'm releasing the driver's side -- or taking off the driver's side upper -- there. Then now over here I'm doing the passenger's side upper. I apologize. I thought I had taken a shot of where these bolts are. Then you actually reach the lower ones easiest right through the front bumper opening. You can see I've got a 10mm socket with a couple extensions so I can reach right in there and get to them easily. You do have to remove this 10mm bolt here, right underneath the radiator hose, because it holds a bracket that goes to the AC condenser. Now you're going to remove two 10mm bolts, one you can see right here. Then it's the same thing on the opposite side. Right down in here -- see there's a little 8 mm bolt. See right on this bracket. Use an 8 mm wrench. Loosen that up a little bit. That allows this bracket to twist kind of out of our way. Now up underneath the car ... so we're on the driver's side of the engine and your tensioner bolt for the serpentine belt is right here. So you want to loosen that up until you can get the belt off.

Then there's the tensioner bolt for your AC V-belt, really easy to get to right here, 13 mm. Okay, we'll fast forward. You see I use a long extension -- a 13mm with a ratchet. Then I get a little impatient and just put the air ratchet up there to do it pretty quick. Then the other side, same thing. Extension, 13mm, and loosen up both those tensioning bolts. From the bottom here you're going to want to grab on to your radiator hose and you'll want to have your drain pan close by. Because it looks like when you do this ... all I'm doing is holding the clamp, twisting the hose. Turn the hose off, kind of curl it up. You can see here here's my fluid. I 100% believe in reusing it if it looks good. It's nice and clear. It does have a little bit of stuff just on the surface, so I'll just run it through a funnel that has a little screen in it and get rid of those contaminants. You can see here on your lower transmission line -- you want to disconnect that. A 1/4 inch wrench or a flat blade screwdriver -- loosen up this clamp. And you can see I bring in a screwdriver. I kind of get the hose coming off there, then reach back up in with my hand. And when you pull this off you're going to get some transmission fluid coming out. That's why if you're going to reuse your coolant I would put it into a suitable container and put your catch pan, or have a different catch pan underneath. And then when you pull it out just stuff it up top so it's a little higher and it won't leak. Then one other thing you might want to do when you're down here is ... here is your radiator fan plug. Pull down the little tab here and pull it off. Disconnect this top transmission line.

Same thing -- loosen the hose clamp and then pull it off. So I'm going to the one down below. This one easy enough to get with the screwdriver. Loosen the clamp with the screwdriver -- use the screwdriver. I also use a pair of pliers. Just kind of lightly grab on to the hose, twist it, break it loose, and then pull it off of the fitting. Now the problem becomes pulling this thing out. This whole unit was put in as one piece so you'll see you've got a condenser ball down here that interferes with the tabs in the radiator. Then you've got lines over here that interfere. So what you need to do is try and pull it out and separate It from there and then pull it out, kind of forcing it that way some. Using a big long screwdriver, you can kind of force your transmission cooler lines around the tab of the radiator. Really what I'm doing here is I'm just trying to push. There are a couple lines that kind of interfere with the tab. I'm just trying to push those and get those out so I can pull the tab up and get the radiator out. The radiator fan assembly can come out. Now you can remove your belts. The serpentine belt tensioner is held on with three 13mm bolts. So, just using a socket and ratchet, remove those three bolts and remove the tensioner. Here I'm going to use a rope or a chain wrench. You can see that it has basically a belt that you wrap right around the pulley. Then it kind of just goes on to itself, and as you pull, it actually tightens itself up. You will see I just put a lot of pressure on that breaker bar, and eventually that bolt loosens up. Once you get that bolt loose you want to loosen it up a few turns, and then put on a 3 jaw puller. Then, as you can see here, as I tighten that bolt on the puller, it starts to pull the crank pulley off.

What you'll have to do is a few times you'll have to pull on it. You'll have to back it off, loosen up the bolt a little more. Use the puller, pull it a little more. Take it off. Back that crank bolt off a little bit more and then eventually the whole thing comes off. Now there's a series of 10mm bolts that hold both the stamped front motor cover, as well as the cast. You see I just used a ratchet and socket to loosen them up, and then I use my air ratchet to pull all the bolts out and pull those front plates off. So we've got the covers off, and ideally you want to do this before it breaks. There are some timing marks. You can see two marks, indentations, on the top of each cam housing. And then on each cam sprocket you can see a little mark right there and a mark right there. And once you rotate those up to here, you should also have a mark that aligns with this TDC, which is Top Dead Center. So here I'm putting the crank shaft bolt -- or the pulley bolt -- back in and then I'll use my ratchet, tighten that up and then I can spin the engine using my ratchet handle. Now you can look down here, and as you can see just a little beyond, there's just a little arrow on the sprocket itself that indicates Top Dead Center. And a little further explanation because I didn't get a good shot of it -- so with that little arrow on the sprocket pointing right at the arrow that says TDC or Top Dead Center, if you go up to your cam shafts, the small dot on the cam shaft sprocket should be right in between the two dots on the housings for both cams.

Now this shot is I'm pointing right to your number one spark plug wire. If you should break the belt -- this vehicle does not have an interference engine -- so if you break the belt it doesn't ruin the engine like on some vehicles. Although you don't want to wait until it goes that long. But, if you should break your belt, what you can do is you can take out your spark plug wire and spark plug, and you'll want to rotate the engine. Block that hole with basically the palm of your hand. Have somebody rotate the engine, and as you feel pressure coming up that hole, that means you're on the compression stroke. So, you feel that pressure, finish turning the crank until Top Dead Center, and then you know that your cam should line up. You have to do this because the cams will actually go around one turn, while the crank goes around two turns. So, it's possible that if you don't do this step you could align your cams incorrectly. Again using your 13mm socket and a ratchet, you want to basically reach underneath and remove your tensioner. It's held in by two 13mm bolts. You can see I'm releasing them right here. Then once your tensioner is out you can take your timing belt off. And this is where we'll end Part 1. So check out the same video Part 2 to see how it goes all back together and replace the water pump.

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