I Tried 7 Ways to Break Loose the One Bolt Blocking My Subaru's $2,100 Timing Belt Job. Only One Worked.
I Tried 7 Ways to Break Loose the One Bolt Blocking My Subaru's $2,100 Timing Belt Job. Only One Worked.
July 2026 · 9 min read
Barb took this from the porch on the second evening. The new belt kit was on the bench, the car had not moved in two days, and one bolt was the reason.
My 2007 Outback has 197,000 miles on it and it has never once left me sitting on the side of a road. Last month the dealer quoted me $2,100 to change its timing belt, water pump and pulleys. The independent shop across town was friendlier about it and still wanted close to a thousand. The parts, the same Aisin kit the shops put in, run about $180 online. I have done my own brakes and oil since high school. I decided this job was mine.
Every man on the Subaru boards will tell you the same thing about it. The belt is not the hard part. The hard part is one bolt in the center of the crank pulley, a 22 millimeter that the factory tightens by procedure until it seats at right around 130 foot pounds, and then lets bake against the block through fifteen years of heat cycles. It sits in the shallow gap between the engine and the radiator, where a full size tool has no room to work. Before you get to use your $180 kit, you have to get past that bolt. Twice, actually, and the second time is the one nobody warns you about.
I spent two evenings on it and I tried everything the internet, the parts counter and my own stubbornness could suggest. Here is every method, in the order I tried them, with the rating each one earned in my driveway. Number seven is the only reason the car is back on the road.
The breaker bar, straight on
I started honest. Car in fifth gear, parking brake set, Barb on the brake pedal, and my 18 inch breaker bar square on the bolt. I leaned into it until the front of the car dipped. Then I set a boot against the bumper and pulled until my forearms shook. The bolt did not move one degree. Not that evening, and not the next morning with a better stance and a worse attitude.
The half inch impact gun, turned all the way up
My compressor is no toy and neither is the gun. I set the regulator as high as it goes and hammered that bolt in thirty second bursts until the neighbor's dog gave up on me. Nothing. Later I found a fellow on the Outback board who put a 250 foot pound torque wrench on his crank bolt just to measure the fight, and the wrench clicked out before the bolt broke loose. My gun was never in that conversation.
Penetrating oil, overnight
I soaked it before bed, both nights, the way you would a rusted exhaust stud. In the morning I wiped it off and got exactly what I paid for, which was a clean bolt. Here is the part nobody says out loud: this bolt is not stuck because of rust. It is stuck because the factory seats it at around 130 foot pounds on purpose and the heat cycles finish the work. There is nothing in there for oil to dissolve.
The breaker bar with a four foot pipe over it
The internet's favorite answer, and it gets two stars because I could finally feel the bolt loading up. I could also feel everything else loading up. The car rocked on its wheels with every pull, the bar flexed like a diving board, and my knuckles hovered one slip away from the radiator fins. I am 66 years old. If that pipe lets go at full pull, I do not bounce off a driveway the way I did at 30. I thought about my hip, and about Barb watching from the porch, and I put the pipe down.
The starter bump trick from the forums
The famous one. You seat the socket and breaker bar on the bolt, brace the bar against the frame so it cannot swing, make sure the engine cannot actually start, and blip the key. The starter motor does the pulling. I will tell you the truth: it worked. There was a POP that I felt in my back teeth, my hands were not steady for a few minutes after, and the bolt was loose. Men on the boards have cracked bars and bent brackets doing this same thing, and every one of them describes that pop the same way I would. Like something expensive letting go.
So why only three stars for the thing that finally moved the bolt? Because the starter bump only loosens. It cannot tighten. And on this engine, putting that bolt back is the half of the job that protects you. Hold that thought until method seven, because I did not understand it myself until a man who spent thirty one years inside these engines explained it in my driveway.
The shop
With the old belt off and the new kit half in, I figured a shop could at least finish the crank bolt for me. That was a humbling set of phone calls. The dealer's answer to any piece of this job was the whole job, at the full $2,100, and no, they would not torque one bolt on work they did not do. The independent was more polite while explaining the same thing. Liability, he said. I understood him fine. I just could not drive a car with a loose crank bolt across town to keep discussing it.
A 16 to 1 torque multiplier, and the friend who owned one
Chet is 71. He put in thirty one years in the service bays of a Subaru store down in the Twin Cities before he retired up the shore, and we drink coffee at the same bait shop most Thursdays. I called him about my half finished driveway. He told me to put a pot on and showed up with a black case the size of a lunch box.
Before he opened it, he gave me the sermon, and it is worth your time. That crank bolt does not get a simple number. The factory procedure is 32 and a half foot pounds on an oiled thread, then another 65 to 75 degrees of pull, which is what seats it at around 130. The old manuals from the nineties just said 75 to 95 and left it there, and those bolts worked themselves loose. When a crank bolt loosens, the pulley starts to wander, the little key that times the engine chews up its slot, and the car begins misfiring on all four cylinders while pointing at nothing. Chet watched a customer spend $1,700 on coils, plugs and sensors chasing that exact ghost. The cause was one bolt a previous owner had put back by feel.
Then he opened the case. Inside was a steel gearbox about the size of a soup can, a folding reaction arm, a crank handle, and a row of deep sockets that included the 22 millimeter this bolt takes. Planetary gears inside, geared sixteen to one. The head is short enough to work in that shallow gap between the pulley and the radiator where my breaker bar could not even start its swing. You seat the socket, rest the reaction arm against the frame rail so steel takes the strain instead of your shoulder, and turn the little crank with two fingers.
Sixteen to one does something else too, and this is the part that earned the fifth star. It turns 70 degrees of bolt into about three easy turns of the handle, which means you can sneak up on the factory procedure instead of lunging at it with a bar. We put my bolt back that same evening. Torque wrench to 32 and a half, a paint mark on the pulley, car in fifth with Barb holding the brake, and then the angle, walked in smooth and controlled through the crank handle while I watched the mark come around. No pop. No prayer. The bolt sat exactly where the factory wanted it, and the gearbox is rated to 680 newton metres, about 500 foot pounds, several times more than this job will ever ask of it.
Two weeks later my brother in law brought his 2009 Forester over for its own belt. His crank bolt, the same 22 millimeter, broke loose with two fingers on the handle. No starter, no pipe, no pop. That is the other half of the five stars: the tool that puts the bolt back right is also the one that gets it off without scaring anybody.
"The gears do the pulling your shoulder can't."
A sixteen to one planetary gearbox that turns two fingers on a crank into more force than the factory ever put on your crank bolt, and walks it back on to the exact procedure when the job is done. The reaction arm braces the fight against the frame, so the strain runs through steel instead of through you. The kit includes the 22 millimeter socket this bolt takes, in a hard case that lives under the seat. It is called the Savary Torque Multiplier.
16 to 1 hardened planetary gears
Every easy turn of the crank is multiplied sixteen times at the bolt. Rated to 680 newton metres, roughly 500 foot pounds, several times what the factory procedure puts on an EJ crank bolt.
The 22 millimeter socket is in the case
Deep chrome vanadium sockets in 17, 19, 21 and 22 millimeter. The 22 is the exact size the crank pulley bolt takes on the belt era EJ engines, and the others cover the lug nuts the tire shop buried while you were not looking.
Short enough for the Subaru gap
The gearbox head works in the shallow space between the crank pulley and the radiator where a breaker bar has no swing at all. The reaction arm braces against the frame rail, so the force goes through steel, not through your knuckles.
It is honest about what it does
The crank has to be held: in gear with the brakes on, or a bar in the ring gear through the inspection cover on an automatic. It will not save rounded heads or bolts glued with red threadlocker. It is not rated for semis. And the bolt always goes back by the book procedure.
Socket on the bolt. Arm braced against the frame. Crank until it breaks loose. When the new belt is on, the pulley gets held again and the bolt goes back through the factory procedure, slow and controlled.
It only comes from one place
The real one is sold direct from the maker's own site and nowhere else. Not Amazon, not eBay, not the parts store. $129.99, shipped free and tracked, guaranteed for a full year. Set that against the numbers from method six, because that is the honest comparison. The dealer wanted $2,100. The independent wanted close to a thousand. The tool is $129.99, it did both halves of the one job they were really charging for, and it does not go home when the job is done.
What happened next
Other Subaru owners who stopped fighting that bolt
"My impact hammered on that crank bolt until the compressor ran out of breath. This broke it loose with me turning a little handle like a pepper mill. The 22 socket was right there in the case."
"I did the starter bump on my last Forester and swore that was the last time. This one came off slow and went back ON through the whole torque and angle procedure, with me in control the entire way. That second part is worth the price alone."
"66 years old, one shoulder full of hardware. Every video said this bolt needs air tools or a young man's back. It needed neither. The frame rail and the reaction arm did the arguing while I turned the crank."
Real footage, no trick. That crank motion is the force my impact gun and four foot pipe could not deliver.
Get yours before the next belt comes due
The Subaru boards are full of Outbacks, Foresters and Legacys with 300,000 miles on them, and every one of them got there on timing belts that actually got changed. If there is a belt era Subaru in your driveway, this argument is already on the schedule. The quote is not getting cheaper, and the bolt is not getting looser.
Garage Bay Field Notes is a reader-supported publication. This is a first-person account from a private owner and reflects his personal experience. The Savary Torque Multiplier is a hand tool that multiplies applied torque through a planetary gear reduction. The reaction arm must be properly braced before use, and on crankshaft fasteners the crankshaft must be held per the vehicle manufacturer's procedure. Always retighten fasteners to the manufacturer's torque specification and procedure, and replace fasteners the manufacturer designates as single use. Results vary by vehicle and condition; fasteners secured with thread-locking compound or previously damaged may require other repair methods. Intended for passenger cars, pickups, SUVs, RVs and trailers; not rated for semi trucks. This publication is not affiliated with Subaru of America, Inc., Subaru Corporation or any vehicle manufacturer, nor with any repair shop.
