Im thinking about doing a timing belt replacement on my 86 Samurai, mainly because I think I have a leak from one of the front seals, but also because I don't think the belt has been changed yet (100,000 mi.). I have a new belt, seals, tensioner and water pump. Are there any tips or tricks that would simplify the job and help avoid mistakes. Im hoping it doesn't turn into a really time consuming job.

I have done a timing belt and water pump on a toyota tacoma but not the seals. Doing the seals is the part that Im most worried about, there are more parts to remove to get to the seals and not sure the best tool to use to remove them. Another thing I noticed is that haynes manual says the whole job is done with #1 cyl. |removethispart|@ tdc. I thought I saw elswhere reference to #4 cyl. |removethispart|@ tdc?

Thanks for any info that might help.

TDC - Top Dead Center - simply means that the particular piston is at the top of it's stroke - and on a four cylinder engine, when #1 is a TDC, so is #4 - now - a lot of people get hung up on having a particular cylinder at TDC, without recognizing that which ever cylinder can be at TDC twice in every cycle - TDC on the exhaust stroke, or TDC on the compression stroke - and on both of those occasions, the crank, rod & piston are in exactly the same place.  What is different (and in fact determines which stroke it is) is the position of the camshaft - what you need to do is make sure that the timing marks on the crank & camshaft are lined up before you remove the belt.

The Haynes manual says to do it with #1 tdc compression stroke and the fsm shows all the marks lineing up with the #4 at tdc compression stroke. Any more tips or tricks or helpfull advice?

The Haynes is incorrect - and not only about that.

If you do it with #4 at TDC, then you actually have a mark that you can reference, when lining up the cam pulley (there is a mark on that black plate that sits behind the cam pulley).  If you do it with #1 at TDC, then all you can do is try to line up the cam pulley mark with the crank pulley mark (not a real precise way to do it, especially for someone not familiar with lining up the marks).
I'd suggest doing with #4 at TDC, just because the marks are easier to line up, if you happen to move the cam.
You do have to remove the cam pulley and the crank pulley to access the seals behind them.  So there is a good possibility that the cam and crank will move a little, when you try to remove the bolts that hold the pulleys on.  So you will have to line up the pulley marks with the reference marks, before you put the new timing belt on.

Do the seals slide out pretty easy and what tool works best? It doesn't look like the crank and cam bolts are torqued very high (around 50ft. lbs.) so I'm hoping they come off fairly easy. The crank bolt on my Tacoma is set to 210ft. lbs., without an impact its work.

To remove the seals I use a sharp drywall screw and screw it through the seal and once I get a couple of threads into the seal, I use some pliers and pull on the screw and it pops the seal out.
I don't recall the torque on the bolts.  That sounds about right for the cam bolt, but the crank bolt should be closer to 100.  The factory uses some good loctite on the bolts, so even if they aren't torqued very high, they can still be a bitch to break loose, without heating them.