In my manual it says you need a special tool to hold the cam gears while you take them off. What do you guys use to do this? :shrug

I've done the timing belt about 7 or 8 times for various reasons and I've never used any special tools. I always just took off the old parts, and put on the new ones, and made sure all the marks lined up. I'm sure all it is for is to keep the cams from rotating and bending valves. Just don't move the cams or the crank around too much and you should be fine. IMO the hardest part about the timing belt job is getting the stock crank pulley off. If you can afford it, it would be a good time to put on an underdrive pulley. It's been my experience that they are a lot easier to get on/off. It's kind of hard to tell when the cam gears are perfectly lined up. It helped me to mark the center on the cam gear bolts, then put a ruler on both of those points. I lined the marks on the cam gears up with the straight edge of the ruler, and that's how I knew they were lined up.

Originally posted by flamineclipse
In my manual it says you need a special tool to hold the cam gears while you take them off. What do you guys use to do this? :shrug

All it really is telling you is to do something to hold the cam gears in place so they dont move and you lose timing. Check out this website that corbin posted and it would help you out alot

http://www.geocities.com/vttalon/hg.html

When I did my change, we used a money wrench to hold the cam gears still. We had to take the valve cover off.Just dont let the gears turn too much