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Hi All...
I just finished doing my serpentine belt, and thought I'd add my experience to the milleiu. This is on a '94 Aero.
I used what's commonly called "the breaker bar method", albeit in modified form.
I jacked the car up, removed (U.S.) passenger side wheel an the front half of the inner fender liner.
To release tension on the belt tensioner, I put a 19mm socket on the tensioner pulley bolt and used a long extension (24" I think) and a long (24") breaker bar on that. The extension sticks well outside the wheel well, and it's relatively easy to get all the movement you need on the breaker bar using this set up.
Others have recommended using the breaker bar "from the top", but I liked doing it this way because I could easly fit/remove the belt while holding the breaker bar in position hooked over my knee.
The real trick to this job, and the difference between easy and utter frustration is how you compress the tensioner. The key is to go slow. Inside the tensioner is a spring and a hydraulic piston. The piston will initially resist high shock changes in pressure, but will eventually yield as the oil runs out of the bottom of the piston through a little valve.
What this means is, don't yank on the breaker bar. Don't even really pull on it. Just apply pressure. You should even be able to hear a little hiss as the oil runs out of the piston, and it will yield some and you'll be able to apply a little more pressure. Going slowly like this, you'll easily be able to compress the tensioner to get plenty of room to slip off the belt.
*** If you don't go slow enough, the tensioner will resist any movement and feel rock hard. Your instinct will be to yank on it with all your might, but this is wrong, as your socket will just round off the nut and come flying off. If you do this while trying to reinstall the belt, the uninhibited tensioner pulley will fly towards the front of the engine and hit the tensioner shock. This will cause it to kink out of alignment. If that happens, you have to remove the whole assembly, take it apart, make sure there's still oil in there (I used brake fluid), somehow compress the thing, use a big arse zip-tie to hold it in the compressed position and re-install it before trying again. ***
Again, if you go slow and wait for the tensioner to yield a little before applying more pressure to the breaker bar, it will go smoothly and you'll be happy. You'll probably come back on this board and tell us all what numbskulls we are for bellyaching that this is such a pain of a job.
posted by 208.110.15...
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