If you can spare the time to have the car down for a few days, I would say this isn't a bad job at all.
I am not super experienced, having changed water pumps and timing belts on a couple of cars. It wasnt bad. If you are going through the trouble to get to the chain and sprockets, I would say go ahead and pull the timing case as well to replace the profile gasket...although that means you will need to pull the upper pan as well. If you go this route, you will not need to touch the head.
Once you get the radiator out of the way, there is plenty of room to work. It was quite the novelty for me to be cleaning off the front of the block while sitting up from underneath the car
I was fortunate enough to have receipts for the past several years when I bought the car.....it looks as though one of the PO had not replaced the tensioner for quite a while. A loose chain will wear the sprockets very quickly. It was obvious as both cam sprockets and the crank sprocket teeth were worn down to sharp points. The upper, lower and guide rail were also worn. I replaced them all along with a new timing chain. The idle sprocket and tension rail didnt look bad at all, so they stayed. I learned quickly while working on my motorcycle to change chains and sprockets as a set. You really need to replace them together...a worn sprocket with a new chain is just not going to work.
It was a chunk of money to replace these parts, but now I know I wont have to touch it before the rest of the car starts falling to pieces on the expressway!
Topic: Timing Chain / Rails / Tensioners DIY?? (Read 4182 times)