Replaced the serpentine belt, tensioner, and idler pulley yesterday at 81,652 miles. No biggie. It's a pretty basic job right? NOT. If you know me well, nothing comes easy and the pranks keep on prankin'
First off, ignore that awful orange rusty looking stain. That's what happens when the passenger motor mount fails and leaks out it's hydraulic fluid. It was the first or second thing I replaced when I got the car.
The idler pulley bolt is pretty long (peep the new one sitting on the axle) and the passenger motor mount had to come off to lower the engine to create the space necessary to remove and replace the idler pulley. Easy as pie.
Next up, the tensioner is held on by two bolts. Top bolt came out fine. The bottom bolt felt fine for a couple rotations and it started showing resistance. Yeah it snapped. I never have any luck drilling out stuck studs and I blame them being super duper seized. Feeling the back end of the bolt that was still stuck in there, it almost felt like it was installed crooked. Oh well.
I ended up drilling through the sucker and used a longer bolt and a spare locking nut I had laying around in my hardware stash. Seems proper and safe.
On to the serpentine belt, I wrestled with it for a good while and couldn't get it on. Took a break and watched a youtube video and learned with the tensioner pulled back all the way, you have to turn the crank pulley to get the belt to catch. Holding the breaker bar back with my shoulder, I had free hands to deal with the crank pulley and eventually got the belt on properly. After that my ratchet got sandwiched between the tensioner and a metal line! I thought that was pretty funny. Loosened the nuts holding the metal line and got my ratchet out.
Sharpie probably won't hold up but I thought this would be funny.
That's all the pranks for now kids.