why don't u ask to borrow the proper tool to hold the cams and use this tool you can hit with and a socket goes on the end of it (forgot what its called) to crack the nut of and tighten it with a torque wrench thats how i did it.

needed to add some porta-power extensions to the breaker bar and finally got there.

__________________
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

Never seen them that tight myself. Always done mine with my dewalt cordless rattle gun.

Was a mission and a half, electrical and pneumatic rattle guns had no effect.

__________________
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

Huh?

Why do you need to hold the cams when loosening the idler pulleys?

Because we were removing the camshaft pulleys.

__________________
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

The thread title suggests pulleys...
Hence Joe's confusion.

Generally, people refer to them in the following way...

Pulley:


Cam gear:

__________________
Signarape!

I wish I knew the trick Steve????
Sometimes they are stupidly tight. I loosen them before removing the belt, it's a 2 person job if they're tight. One holds the tensioner down so the belt won't slip, with his spare hand he holds a breaker bar on the crank pulley bolt to stop the engine turning. The other person swings off a metre long breaker bar until it undoes with an almightly crack or the 10mm allen key rounds out the capscrew head. Then you carefully cut the head off the bolt to release the camgear and buy a new one.

Above ^^^ someone sugested using a tool called an 'impact driver' this is not recomended on camshaft gear bolts as you can very easily punch the camshaft through it's thrust face and into the head, ruining the whole cylinder head.

when to tight, best solution is to weld a nut onto the end of the bolt, between the heat and the better grip they undo 99% of the time.
they get done up to 70ftlb.
the correct tools to hold the cam gears are very very handy, especially VCT gears

Ohhhhhhh now I get it!! As Matty mentioned, in my world, a pulley = idler.

Cam gears are a different thing all together