timing belt tension

Is it unusual on a 3.4 for the timing belt to have a little slack in it after sitting overnight.It has 60,000 miles on it and going on 9 year's

 

How can you see it? Is the cover off? 9 years I would say go ahead and do it if you are worrying about it.

 

timing belt slack is ultra bad for our trucks! check the tensioner and pulley located behind the air compressor. You'll have to remove quire a few components to do this. all timing belts are cloth braided quite a bit internally so they never stretch and cause issues.

you may just want to get all the timing components redone by a shop because of how difficult it is to do this.

 

If you are mechanically inclined then do it yourself. Parts cost is $365 on EBay, a new crank pulley removal tool is $70 on Amazon (but I have one I'll sell for $45 delivered), and a 250-pound torque wrench is about $80 (Cobalt-brand at Lowes). Also at Lowes you can get yourself a 19mm short impact socket to remove the crank bolt. You'll save about $400 by not letting a stealer do it.

Took me about 3 half-days (4-5 hours each) to do the entire thing. The 2nd worst thing is undoing the AC pump (just undo it and move it out of the way to access the belt tensioner, don't disconnect any pipes or wiring). The third worse thing is remounting it. The WORST thing about the job is ... starting it.

There are writeups on youtube for this.

 

What he said^^^

The timing belt/water pump kit was my first "serious" job I've done to a motor. It was pretty overwhelming at first, and was very anxious to do it myself. But I did my research on here with the write-ups, used the Haynes for torque specs only, and accomplished it in 2 days. It's not all that hard, except the crank bolt almost wouldn't come off. Impact wouldn't even get it. I about popped a hernia putting all my might into it but got it! The belt isn't too bad itself. There's a trick to it. Plus I just did the same job on a passat, which was more involved than our trucks, and all went well. So I'm pretty confident in myself now