Had some nice weather this last weekend and I spend Sat. working on the car. Replaced the timing belt, tensioner, water pump, serpentine belt, changed the oil\antifreeze and put new plugs in it. Had ordered the timing belt and serpentine belt from carparts.com (can you say JC Whitney boys and girls?) and they hosed me by sending me the wrong timing belt. Had to run out late on Sat. and pay $51 at an import parts store to get the right one. All the other parts ordered more recently from FCP groton were the right ones with good quality. Will shop there from now on.

Replacing the timing belt was not too bad. The only tidbits I would add to what was discussed in the faq section on timing belts is that you need a long handled 12mm box wrench to get at the tensioner bolts that are somewhat blocked by the harmonic balancer. It does make things much easier to remove two screws and move the electric fan assembly to the side to work on the front of the motor. I also used some cable ties to secure the timing belt to both of the cam gears so it wouldn't move prior to getting the tensioner reinstalled. Pulling the water pump was easy once the belts were out and I also removed the serpentine belt tensioner for extra clearance during the job.

Having run out of time on Sat. with the timing belt, I replaced the front rotors with Zimmerman rotors from FCP groton. These rotors were 32 apiece and they corrected the front end shimmy I was experiencing when the brakes were applied. I had replaced all 4 rotors and brakes about 25k miles earlier, and these apparantly warped cause I was ignorant and used my impact wrench to torque em down. Course the originals lasted about 120k miles with my impact wrench method without warping, so I wonder a bit about the quality of bendix rotors... And where did those come from,... Carparts.com. ;'(

I examined both the front and rear suspension components as best I could. None of the shocks are leaking, ride height is good even carrying a load of ceramic tile in the trunk and they pass the jounce test. Tires are wearing normally. I could not detect any play in the front end trying to move the hub up and down, back and forth by hand, but I still think that there might be some play in there when I drive her. She does track down the road straight and there is no wander. She also got her 5th set of tires as well, conti ch95's and that has improved her ride remarkably. All in all she is doing well for a car with 145k on the clock.