How to Replace Timing Cover 2000-06 Chevy Tahoe

Start by disconnecting the battery, disconnect the negative terminal, use an 8-millimeter wrench. Loosen this up. Take it off and set it aside. You don't have to remove the tire to access the lower radiator hose, but we took it off so you can see. Lower radiator hoses right here. Now there's no drain on this radiator. So we're gonna have to take off that hose, just gonna use a hose clamp tool. Just move this wire out of my way. Just gonna use a trim tool. Just remove this retainer for this wire. And slide that out of the way, now I can access the clamp. And slide the hose clamp tool over the clamp.

Make sure you have a drain bucket underneath. Loosen that up. Just try to twist the hose back and forth. Just be careful, you don't wanna splash too much coolant on you. It's gonna use a pry bar just to pry it out a little. You can use a straight blade screwdriver. Just going back and forth. There we go. Once you get this started, you might want to lower the vehicle. And one thing I forgot to mention make sure you do this while the engine's cool. You don't want to do this with hot coolant. And just slide this off. And there we go.

I'm gonna remove this cover, use an 8-millimeter socket, loosen up this bolt. And slide the cover up. Now we're gonna remove this snorkel. There is a bracket right here that attaches to the upper radiator hose. This one's broken, but if yours is there, just use a screwdriver or a trim tool and remove that, and loosen up these worm clamps with the 8-millimeter socket, or a straight blade screwdriver, and also this one over here.

Now slide this snorkel off there and then off the throttle body and slide it up. Now, disconnect the mass airflow sensor. There's a little lock tab on here, slide that back and then push down on the terminal lock right there, and grab the airbox, pull it straight up, and wiggle it out, there's the tabs that hold it down. Now we're going to take the belt off. Normally the adapter, you're going to use a 15-millimeter wrench or a serpentine belt tool that has the 15-millimeter adapter. This tensioner actually uses a 14-millimeter. So put that on, loosen this up, slide the belt off the idler arm right here. Then loosen the tension on the tensioner, and you can take the belt off completely.

Keep in mind how the belt goes. You could take a picture of the belt before you take it off. That might be helpful. Now I'm gonna remove the tensioner. Use a 15-millimeter socket, and there's three bolts. And slide that out of the way. Now we're going to start taking the hoses off the water pump. Just remove this hose from this bracket and this bracket and then use a hose clamp tool.

We can move the hose clamp up the hose a little bit, just like that, and try to twist the hose a little bit. There we go and slide it off. If it doesn't come off like that, you can take a pic tool and just slide it in between the hose and the water pump. Loosen it up all the way around, just to make sure the coolant's strained at this point and take these hoses off as well the same way. Just use your hose clamp tool.

Now I'm gonna remove the bolts for the water pump. There's three on this side and three on the other side. Use a 10-millimeter socket. All those bolts are loose. Take those out. And grab the pump and slide it out. I'm gonna drain the oil, use a 13-millimeter wrench. Sometimes it's a 15-millimeter wrench, then take the drain plug out. Make sure you have a drain bucket below to catch the oil. The oil is drained out, put the drain plug back in and snug it down.

Now we're gonna remove the level sensor, you're gonna use a pick, preferably a hook style pick like this, or even a 90-degree pick will work. And then just try to get underneath the clip of where the connector is. Pull up, and just connect the connector. So what you're doing with the pick is trying to get under there and just lift up, just slightly you don't want to crack it and disconnect that. Now use a 1 1/8 socket and just loosen that once you crack it free, you should be able to spin it by hand. Take that off, and it looks like the O ring gets stuck to the side of the oil pan. Take that off and just slide it up.

Now, if you have a shield that goes right here, you're gonna want to take those bolts out right there and right there, take that down out of the way, this vehicle doesn't have that. Now I want to take this cross member down. Use an 18-millimeter wrench on the back right here on the nut and then on the bolt 18-millimeter socket. Take this out. And I'll do the same on this one. Where I take those bolts out completely. There's two bolts right here with nuts on top. Do the same, 18-millimeter wrench and 18-millimeter socket.

Now just support the cross member, and pull those out and slide it down. Now we're going to take off the front driveshaft. Before I do that, I just want to mark it from the front yoke. Just take a marker or a pen. This way I can put it back together the way it came apart. Just to avoid any unnecessary vibrations that you could cause. I'll use a 11-millimeter socket, or you can use a wrench. Take these caps off, twist it, and then get these ones off.

Now before I slide the driveshaft out, there is a clamp that goes right here. You're gonna want to take that clamp off, it looks just like this one. You can either cut it off or just try to jam a screwdriver in there and pry it off. When you go to put it back together, you could use a tie wrap or a wire tie to put back in that position. So this one doesn't have that. So I'm all set. Now just take any pry bar, pry back and just be careful, you don't want these caps to fall off. Just wiggle this back and forth a little bit. Slide it down. Then you can slide this forward. I'll just pry this boot back a little bit. And just slide the shaft out.

I'm going to need to remove these front axle bolts. Before I do that, I'll just again mark this just to put it back to how it was when I took it apart. There we go. Now I'll take these bolts out. Here's a 15-millimeter socket, you can rotate this. And take that out. And you can just grab this and move it to the side. You can do the same on the other one. Now disconnect the electrical connector. You can use a pick tool or a screwdriver, slide the lock up and slide it back and disconnect this wire clip right here. Slide that out. And there's another one further up. Move the wire out of the way. And there's another one way up top, it's kind of hard to see, just kind of have to do it by feel. All this connected.

Because this steering bar is going to be in my way, I need to turn the wheel all the way to the left. So you can turn the steering wheel to the left or just grab the wheel and turn it. All right, and now because I'm doing this by myself, I am gonna use a transmission jack just to support the front axle. Just get underneath here. Just like that, I'm gonna take this bolt out up top here. Let's start with that one. And there's a nut on the backside of here, right, take a 21-millimeter socket, and a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut. And take this off. Kind of get the nut off. And now I can take the bolt out. Just slide it up.

Just like that. And I'll take this bolt out right here, the same 21-millimeter socket and 21-millimeter wrench. Get that out. Now we'll take these two nuts off, use a 21-millimeter socket, there should be a washer there as well, take this nut off as well. Now, this is completely disconnected, I can lower down the transmission jack a little bit. Just try to get this by the axle. And you kind of got a tip this up a little and twist it. There we go.

Now this area has to get past that steering shaft. Just tip it up. And I'm just using the transmission jack just to prevent it from falling to the ground. In some cases that you can get this past the steering shaft, it's given us a little bit of trouble. So I'm actually gonna take the idler arm out so that I can move the shaft out of the way, and then we can drop this down a lot easier. I'm just gonna take these two bolts out, and there's nuts on the backside, and use a 21-millimeter wrench on the back and a 21-millimeter socket on the front.

Slide those out, you might have to turn the wheel back a little bit. Just don't be careful not to crush the front differential because it is still in that position. To slide this out, watch out for those transmission lines. It's good, then slide this forward. Now hopefully, that gave us enough room. Just tip this down. There we go. Just twist it a little bit.

Slide it down. And you wanna tip the back of it up. Now there's a breather hose right there, and don't forget to disconnect that. And slide it down. The wires go through this bracket right here, this plastic bracket, and there's a bolt that goes right here. Use a 10-millimeter socket to take that bolt out.

Grab this bracket, just slide it towards the driver's side. There's a little pin right there. Comes up, just stays like that. There's a bracket right here that holds the transmission cooler lines and the two wiring harnesses. And you can take out the bolt, it's a 10-millimeter socket I'm gonna use. Take that off there.

And then this is loose. And this little cover that covers the bell housing is a 10-millimeter bolt right there. Take that out. And this is loose. And on the other side of this bracket right here, just take this out, use the same 10-millimeter socket. Slide that off. And if you have oil cooler lines, if your vehicle has oil cooler lines, you're gonna want to take those off, this vehicle does not.

Now all along the perimeter of the oil pan, you're gonna take these bolts out, there's two in the front there, you're gonna use the same 10-millimeter socket. And then right here, here, back here. There's a hidden one back here, another one here, and here. And up there, some behind here as well.

So take all those out. And it's two bolts that go into the back of the oil pan right here. Use a 15-millimeter socket, take those up. And you might want to support the oil pan when you take those out. And some of the oil's leaking out as well, should have a drain pan underneath here. Because we didn't take the oil filter off yet. Slide this down, slide it up. Now I can remove the AC belt, just gonna use a 3/8 extension on a ratchet and just slide it into the tensioner. Take the tension off the belt, then you take the belt and slip it off on the inside of the crank pulley. You can slide the belt off the compressor and away from the tensioner.

And there you go, I'm going to use a 24-millimeter socket and take the crank bolt out. Just be careful, don't loosen up too much, or your gun might get stuck. You don't wanna break the fan shroud and take it out by hand. Now I'm gonna take a harmonic balance remover tool. And this clips onto the balancer. You can try to use a three-job puller, but it's really not that easy.

Now that's on there. I'm just going to take a socket and a wrench. And as I tighten this down, it's gonna pull the balancer outward. There we go. Take the tool out, and there's the balancer. All right, so we're going to take this bolt out without taking the AC compressor bracket off. If you are having trouble getting access to that bolt, you can take the compressor off, just don't disconnect the lines. You want to take the bolts off the compressor, and then underneath that, you can access the bolts for that bracket. But that's gonna take a lot longer. So to do it quickly, we're just going to use an open-ended 10-millimeter wrench and just try to loosen it up this way.

And that's significantly easier than taking that bracket off and saves you a lot of time. And take the rest of the seven bolts out, I'm gonna use a 10-millimeter socket, and those are fairly easy to access. Now I'm just going to pry the cover off. I'm just going to use a small pry bar. Just put my hand in front of the cover, so it doesn't fall. Grab that. Slide it up. And I'm gonna take the gasket off right here, just carefully peel it off, you're gonna have to replace that.

And now, before we get the timing cover on, we want to clean this surface. You can use a razor blade or a scraper. Just be careful if you're using a razor blade. You don't wanna gouge the metal. And we have our new timing cover. And there's a hole right here if you have a sensor or a different actuator for a different vehicle, but we don't have that, so we have this plate with a gasket.

So we're gonna install that and put the bolts in and then snug up the bolts with a 10-millimeter socket. And take the gasket and light it up, it only goes on one way. There is a little bump on this side over here, and take the bolts and slide them through the cover. The gasket should hold the bolts in just like this and line the cover-up.

And get the bolts started. You don't wanna tighten these down too much. So when we want the bolts in, just loose enough so that I can move the cover. Now there's a special tool that GM uses to align this cover. We don't have that tool, so we're just gonna install the harmonic balancer and do the best we can. Now install the harmonic balancer, and now we're gonna use this harmonic balancer installer. And that's gonna slide the bouncer onto the crankshaft.

Now it's easier to install this from underneath the vehicle and tighten this down. I just have to tighten the nut down. Now the balancer's all the way down so I can loosen up the tool and take it off. Now we're gonna take the original crank bolt and reinstall it. Now we're just gonna tighten it down, and this is gonna ensure that the crank pulley is all the way down and loosen it up, take it out, you want to install your new bolt.

Now before we put our new crank bolt in, we are gonna need to hold the engine from spinning. So just take this cover off right here. Then I'm going to take a straight blade screwdriver. And I'm just going to have an assistant hold this to prevent the crankshaft from spinning as I torque this. They do make a special adapter that you can bolt onto the engine so that it holds the flywheel from spinning, but we don't have that. So we're just going to use a screwdriver. And put the new bolt in.

Now there's a sequence that I need to do to tighten this down. So the first thing I need to do is torque this to 110 foot-pounds. All right, I just got to loosen this up a little bit. We want to loosen it 360 degrees, which just loosen it up. Now I'm going to torque this down to 59 foot-pounds. And then you need to if you have an angle meter, use an angle meter. If not, just do the best you can, and you want to tighten it 125 degrees.

And then from underneath here, you wanna take a straight edge, preferably a metal straight edge, and just line this up. So you can still move the front cover up and down. Just get that lined up and check the other side as well. Ensure that's good. Now you can tighten these bolts down to 18 foot-pounds.

And then, after you do that, double-check and make sure that it didn't drop at all, and you need to adjust it and do the same with the other ones. Now take some brake parts cleaner and just clean all this surface area. You can take a scraper if some of the buildup seems kind of high or a razor blade. Just be careful, you don't want to gouge the metal.

Now, if you're reusing the oil pan, you're gonna want to take this gasket off. They are riveted down from the factory. So if it's never been replaced before, you're going to have to drill these rivets out. So there's one there and one there. And that's just for assembly from the factory, so you don't have to put those rivets back in. Just make sure you clean up all the shavings that fall in there. And then clean up the pan just like we cleaned up on the engine with either a razor blade or a scraper and some brake parts cleaner and a rag.

Now I take the new oil pan gasket and just line it up just like that. Now there's a couple sections where the case splits where the front cover and rear cover split on the engine, and it's good idea to take a little bit of RTV. I'm gonna do a little dab right here. Probably a little less than that would be good. And then over here, there's these little hash marks right there and right there.

That's just gonna help it seal where there was case halves meet or where those covers meet. Just slide it in position. Just get a couple bolts started. And now I'm gonna start snugging these bolts up before I torque them and put these two lower bell housing bolts in and snug those up. Now I'm going to use a torque wrench and torque all these bolts and the front cover bolts, these two to 18 foot-pounds. And then, after that, we have to torque these to a different torque.

So start with these ones. I'll just start in the middle and work my way out. And these two rear bolts of the oil pan, the longer ones, those you''re gonna torque those two 106 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds, and torque these two lower bell housing bolts to 37 foot-pounds.

Now with this cover, we can put the bolt that goes right there and snug that down. Just snug it up and this cover on the driver's side and put the bolt in, and snug it up. Now this transmission cooler line bracket, line this up and take the bolt, get the bolt in. And get that started and tighten it down. And this front wiring bracket, there's a pin right here that's gonna slide into the oil pan. Just slide over just like that and take this bolt, put this bolt in here and tighten it down. Right now, we're going to install the front differential. I am using a transmission jack to help support it.

There we go. Hard part's over. Now, I'm just gonna get all the mounts lined up. All right, this is lined up. You can put those nuts on right here. There's washers and nuts, washer on and the nut. Just leave these loose. You can torque these later and take these bolts. Just line this up. And put the nut on, and then this mount you're gonna have to lower this down a little bit. Just get that lined up.

And slide the bolt through there and the nut on the backside. Now we're gonna tighten this bolt down. Use a 21-millimeter wrench on the nut, and if you have the ability to torque this, torque this to 75 foot-pounds, and this bolt is well 75 foot-pounds.

Tighten these two nuts, then you can torque these nuts to 67 foot-pounds. I can hook up the wiring harness. Just line this up. Plug this connector in, and then where the wire retainers are, just hook those, the wire into those and lock those down right there. And then there's another one up here. And then there's another one way further up. And hook this vent hose up. It should be good.

Now line up the front CV shafts and put the bolts back in. I'm just gonna hold the rotor with the pry bar, the axle from spinning, and then torque these to 58 foot-pounds. Then you're going to do the same on the other one. Now take the front driveshaft and just slide it over that cross member and the exhaust and slide it into the transfer case and push that boot on there. And then slide the front U-joint into the yoke and try to line it up with your marks, and put these caps on.

Now, I'm just gonna use a pry bar to prevent the driveshaft from spinning and torque these bolts to 18 foot-pounds. Now you should get a clamp that goes on here, pretty much like the clamp that came off of there. There's a metal clamp, or some people actually use a wire tie on that, that works as well. And we'll take the idler arm and get that lined back up. Get that back in position and put the bolts and the nuts back on, and torque these bolts to 73 foot-pounds. Make sure you have a wrench in that nut.

All right, take this cross member and slide it up in position and take the bolts, two longer ones go right here. Two shorter ones go over here. Put the nuts on top. Put the nuts on the front, and tighten all these bolts down. And just double-check make sure the drain plug's tight. Snug it up, and now I'm just gonna prime the filter with engine oil. Make sure you use the correct oil. Try to get it in that center hole, and just make sure you get oil on the ring of the seal.

And that's good. Now install the filter. Line that up, and then once it's snug, go about another quarter turn. That's good. And take the level sensor and carefully slide it in the hole. Then you can torque this to 115 inch-pounds. Make sure you're on inch-pounds, not foot-pounds. And take the plug, line it up, plug it back in.

Now take the AC belt, and slide it behind the crank pulley. And go around the AC compressor, and on the tensioner, looks pretty good. I just grabbed the belts right here. And take your 3/8 extension and ratchet. Just loosen up the tension on the tensioner and walk the belt around the crank pulley, and double-check. That looks good, everything's on there, right. Now, if you have these covers, one under here and also the plastic one upfront. You want to put those on. Snug up the bolts. Now, you want to clean up the ceiling surface where the water pump's gonna go. Just use a scraper. If you're careful, you can use a razor blade to scrape any excess gasket material. Right there, and then also right in here, and wipe it down with a rag and some brake parts cleaner.

Now, if you don't have a new thermostat housing to put on your new water pump, you can transfer over the old one, just use a 10-millimeter socket. Take these bolts out. Slide that out. I'm gonna replace the seal for the thermostat, just grab the thermostat and just pry it off. Now you want to clean all this up, use a scraper or some emery cloth and just clean all this corrosion up. Just pull the seal off and wipe down the thermostat. Take the new seal, and it does go on a certain way with this little breather valve is, that's where this little mark goes. And just wrap this around, just like that. And there is an indent right there where that little tab goes, just like that. That looks good.

Slide that in position and put my bolts in. Snug these up first. And now we'll torque those bolts to 11 foot-pounds. Now we want to take and put some new gaskets on the water pump. If you're reusing the water pump, then you wanna clean up the surfaces where the gaskets are and slide the bolts through. The bolts will kinda hold the gasket a little bit, just like that. Now, carefully slide the water pump in place. Making sure the gaskets don't fall and snug up the bolts. Now we're gonna torque these six bolts. There's two passes. So the first pass, you're going to torque them to 11 foot-pounds, and then second pass tighten it to 22 foot-pounds.

Now we can attach all the coolant hoses and the clamps. It's good, the same with the heater hoses and take the tensioner pulley and wind this up, get the bolts started. Then torque these bolts to 37 foot-pounds. Now we can install the upper radiator hose. Just line this up, slide it down, and slide the hose clamp down in position. We can install the serpentine belt, go around the crank pulley, and up around the water pump and down around the power steering pump pulley, and up around the alternator. And then go around the tensioner, and then last is the idler pulley, so we're gonna put a little tension on the belt, and you can use your serpentine belt tool or just a wrench or a ratchet. Loosen the tension on the tensioner and slide the belt underneath. Just double-check all your pulleys, and it looks good.

Now align the air box up. Push it down into the grommets and plug the mass airflow sensor in. Take the snorkel and line this up over the mass airflow sensor and on the throttle body. There we go, and snug these worm clamps down. Put this cover on, slide it in position and tighten it down. And now we can put the appropriate oil in. Use the funnel. Put the cap back on. Now hook the battery up and tighten down the terminal. Just snug it up. Make sure you wiggle it, make sure it's not loose, you can add the appropriate coolant, a 50-50 mix, and you want to top this off up to where the full line is.

And then you start the vehicle. Let the vehicle run for about 10 minutes monitoring the temperature gauge while you're running the vehicle and monitoring the level you're gonna want to top it off while it's still running. And once it's warmed up, shut the vehicle off, let it cool, put the cap on, and then after it's cooled, check the level again.

Now when you first start the vehicle, you want to take a look at this oil pressure gauge. And just make sure that comes up fairly quickly. So this is the first time starting, so watch that gauge, and it came up pretty quickly. Now because we disconnected the steering idler arm, it would be a good idea to have the vehicle aligned after you're done.