Timing belt questions.

This is for a 98 Avalon, but more in regards to general timing belt replacement. My big concern is getting the harmonic balancer off since I:

A: Don't have a air compressor or impact wrench. I have a shitty electric impact wrench instead. But I do have a breaker bar.

B: Apparently getting the bolt off out of the harmonic balancer is a bitch and requires lots of torque.

But... I read online repeatedly about a little trick where you can basically put a breaker bar on the bolt, tie or secure the breaker bar to the frame or whatever happens to be handy, remove the spark plugs, then crank the engine and the force of the starter will break the bolt free. I'm just imagining all kinds of disastrous possibilities.

So... anyone else used this ingenious method or have a better way to loosen this thing?

 

Same here......

Probably more along the lines of - my husband and I are lacking the BALLS it takes to try it.

 

Well, I have a welder and lots of scrap steel sitting around, so I could possibly make something to use as a holder. But that would waste precious time, thus I think I'll try the little starter trick first and close the hood when I mash the starter so the wrench won't fly off into the neighbors yard or something. It'll be exciting!

 

There are all kind of short cuts or tricks for getting the pulley bolt off, but the real important thing is to be able to properly torque it on reinstallation.

If you fail to properly torque it, it will come loose and the pulley will spin on the nose of the crank and destroy the pulley and the crankshaft.

So, take it off with the tool you are going to use to reinstall it later when you are done. There is no tying anything to the frame to retoque it trick.

Gadget

 

I have used the method you described with no problem. You just need to make sure the engine doesn't start. There is a method described here, using a fabricated tool: http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/maintenance/timing_belt/
Look in the second set of images.