club.liberty.asn.au

I'm trying to get away with changing the idler and tensioner pulley on the cheap, without having to press in/out bearings. I can get complete pulleys for no cost and for an easier replacement.

I've found plenty of resources that say the two pulleys have the same bearings, but are they identical pulleys as well? Dayco only have a listing for the idler pulley which would suggest it is different, but they look identical in photos (I don't have the car at the moment to physically check). Banging my head against a wall trying to find specs/part number of the tensioner pulley.

Pulleys are the same from what I could tell.
Pressed the bearings out on mine a few weeks ago.

The Steel Pulley and Bearing Assembly are the same and are interchangeable.
I have swapped them over to even out the bearing wear.

As above exactly the same bearings and metal couplings. Bolts are different.
Bearings are about 6 bucks each and if you have the gift of the gab I reckon a sixpack would cover pushing the bearing in and out

I used th etrust benck vice in my workshop to press out and press in the bearings.
Easy Peasey.
Selecting suitable tubes and sockets to bear on the correct diameters of the bearings and the job is done in less minutes than you can count on one hand.
Beware of the Hex Nut at the rear of the pivotting tensioner pulley that drops off before you find out there is one there!

BillyCorgi wrote:Beware of the Hex Nut at the rear of the pivotting tensioner pulley that drops off before you find out there is one there!

Haha +1

BillyCorgi wrote:I used th etrust benck vice in my workshop to press out and press in the bearings.
Easy Peasey.
Selecting suitable tubes and sockets to bear on the correct diameters of the bearings and the job is done in less minutes than you can count on one hand.
Beware of the Hex Nut at the rear of the pivotting tensioner pulley that drops off before you find out there is one there!

Hah, I wasn't expecting more replies to this thread and didn't check it before I did the job. Lost that nut in the gap behind the timing case... twice. I had to go fishing with a telescopic magnet. Thankfully I vaguely remembered reading about a nut behind the pulley, that sucker was down deep and well out of sight. I also got to verify that the pulleys are 100% identical.

For future reference for anyone interested, an Impreza FB20 pulley works perfectly for the idler (only 0.5mm diameter difference - I can't fathom why Subaru made an 82.5mm pulley...). However the FB20 pulley won't work for the tensioner, as it has a bigger bearing so the inner cone of the pulley fouls on the tensioner bracket. Going to need a new bearing and a press after all