chrysler 3.5 V6 ??
Ive done several belts on these, and many other engines. Foreign and domestic. These are one of the easiest to do. Ever do one on a twin turbo stealth? You don't know difficult until you do. The transverse setup makes it a real *****. The 3.5 being situated where you can access the belt from the front made it even easier.
I agree with this one.
After a few and using the lock down tools the belt is an hour's job, tops.
A helluva lot worse nightmares out there, like the 3.5L Hyundai DOHC. That was originally a 13 hour book time job, simply because a lot of techs were dropping the engine out of the car in order get to the belt. Then the time was adjusted to 7 hours after a few tricks were discovered. The worse part about it was one hidden bolt on a bracket that you had to feel. Most of the ones I've ever done had that bolt thrown on the bench to make it easier next time.
As far as the "weak points" like break away caps, a lot manufacturers have gone to that, so that's a wash compared to others.
And there's a lot of timing belt driven water pumps out there in the world today. Again, that's a wash with other manufacturers.
I consider the biggest nightmare is the 2.7L in Stratuses etc when it comes to water pumps. Timing
chain driven. And I've never been successful at being able to just lash the chain to the opposite head like on Ford head pulls and still keeping it in time. Pretty much have to start from scratch. And forget about doing the
complete job, like dumping all the coolant and changing the t-stat. The damned t-stat housing is located under the A/C pump.
I've never had to do the same job in the LH's, but figured it would a be a lot easier with the longitudinal engine and a helluva lot more room.
I will go on to say that I've had a few 3.5L Chrysler products. The first one jumped time when the water pump went bad. Skipped a few teeth. Put a new pump on, new belt, and the car ran strong. But then again, each of them has run strong. It's the rest of the car that was failing around the engine. Started to nickel and dime to the point that it wasn't worth it.
