I knew my G needed servicing 30,000 miles ago but hesitated due to time, money, and everyday living. At 110,000 I finally bought replacement rotors/pads, belts, and plugs. The brakes were vibrating at any speed and were replaced days before going on a snow trip with the fam. Thinking about it now, it would have been catastrophic if I waited until after because it was an all-mountain drive with luckily no snow on the roads.

10,000 miles later, with the parts sitting in my garage collecting dust, I finally replaced my belts and plugs. There was a pool of oil in #6 and all the plugs were worn out bad (see pics). It took about 1.5 hours since I have never done any engine work on my G. The passenger side was very tight and frustrated the hell out of me, but I overcame that and continued.

The belts took roughly 45 min and was very simple to do on your own. I followed the advice of one member about tension. Instead of buying a tool or going by feel, I just counted the number of revolutions to undo and tighten the tensioner. 10 for the larger belt and 16 for the thinner belt with no issues as of yet. I luckily changed them in time because the thinner belt had two sections completely missing the grooves (see pics).

With the maintenance, I can definitely feel that the G is back to life and is more responsive. Please see the pictures (sorry so large) I included which hopefully pushes any slackers out there to be more proactive in the servicing of your car.

Thanks to everyone on this forum for being very helpful and informative.

 

yea my belts and plugs looked the same way a while back lol

 

Nice work on the maintence. Did u order up a valve cover to take care of #6

 

Those plugs look fine, no sarcasm.

Hate to say, but Your belts are adjusted wrong, if you used that method. That's not correct dude.

Older belts have stretched, and if your belt's were ever adjusted in their life (likely they were), then your adjustment is surely off. You've likely got the new belts Singing tight, if you adjusted the tensioner to the same spot the old, stretched, worn belts were.

Just put a finger on either side of the belt and turn it (twisting motion). If it turns to 90 degrees (belt now vertical) then it's fine. No tighter, no looser, you'll be fine.

too tight is worse than too loose in most cases, you'll smoke alternator bearings, etc.

Hope that helps you out, know it's not super great news to hear you need to re-do something lolz. Just trying to help, kudos for digging in yourself and getting it done!

 

Thanks TunerMax. I will check the belts using your method. The car was purchased at 50,000 with the original belts and they were never replaced or adjusted ever since.

Is there a considerable difference in length between old and new? I placed them next to each other but didn't bother checking.

 

The valve cover might be the next project once I read all the details in the forum. Will the oil in #6 cause other concerns besides oil consumption?

 

NP. It's not the 100% proper method but it'll get you close enough without deflection tools or measurements. Belts are one of those things you just 'feel' for. No one uses those tools.

And considerable difference when off the car? No. But once the belt is in the grooves of the pulleys and adjusted, it will be quite a bit different between a new belt and an old worn one, yes.

Does that make sense?

Hope you didn't put a new spark plug in there, lol. You'll screw a spark plug at the very least.

Fouled spark plug can cause a misfire on that cylinder. This can cause rough running poor fuel economy. It can also cause overfuelling and that washes the oil off the cylinder walls which creates accelerated wear. This is especially damaging on #5 and #6 because those are high heat high wear cylinders to start with.