Under the shade tree, in my garage

[richardf8]

For about a year now, I had a badly screaming belt on my Saturn SW1. Sparing the play by play of the events that moved this onto the front burner, I decided that this was the weekend and today was the day that would change. The problem was not the belt (although it was frayed) but was, in fact, the belt tensioner - basically a spring-loaded idler pulley that exerts pressure on the belt to maintain belt tension. The pivot of the the tensioning arm has a bushing which had become shmushed, rendering the tensioner incapable of exerting sufficient presure on the belt to keep it from slipping.

So why did I wait a year to do it? Because the first procedure I found for doing entailed supporting the engine with a block of wood and removing the engine mount. If one was lucky, this procedure chimed, one could maybe avoid having to pull the power steering pump. So my next door neighbor, a mechanic who takes the occasional job said that If I got the parts, she'd do the work for 100 bucks. Sounded good. We agreed on the Friday after Thanksgiving (also morgan1's and my anniversary). The day rolled round, no word. Turns out, she had the flu, and although she said she'd get to it the next day, she did not look like she would be doing anything but sipping hot beverages and taking bedrest anytime soon.



The instructions that came with the part when I bought it were quite different than what was in my Haynes guide. It said that if I would remove the tire, and pull the splash shields out of the wheel well I would have direct access to the tensioner, although, it admonished, removing the top bolt was difficult but doable with the right combination of wrenches. Sounded good.

So I decided, over morgan1's skepticism to wade in and just do it myself. So here is what I did: I pulled the tire and dissassembled the wheel well. Then I removed what was left of the old belt. I then decided I needed a long 10mm box wrench and we went to Sears for that. I got that and a set of nifty ratcheting box wrenches as well. Came back and easily removed the lower mounting bolt from the tensioner. Then got a gander at the upper mounting bolt.

It was . . . buried. There was no place to get a wrench on it and obtain more than a few degrees of movement. My mind quickly put together the mythical "combination of wrenches" with which this might be "doable." But I didn't have half the tools necessary to throw such a Rube Goldberg jury-rig together. Time to come up with a plan of my own. First thing I did was to pull the idler pulley off the tensioner. This gave me a new angle of approach, but gained me little. I had about 3 degrees of motion before hitting another idler pulley placed dead center behind the engine mount. I was to the point of contemplating the "support the engine with a block of wood" precedure, and had even found said piece of would when it became apparent that the mount wasn't going anywhere. That was just as well, I didn't really want to go there. So, instead, I removed the idler pulley. It was difficult, but here a ratcheting box wrench really shone. I got it out after 10 minutes work and had enough clearance to break the top bolt on the tensioner free. It was hand loose instantly, and, with the aid of a 10mm socket, I spun it off with my two index fingers, there being insufficient clearance to use my super primate powers (no space to oppose my thumb).

Well the old part came out easily, and it was immediately apparent that I would need to pull the idler from the new part to install it. But I couldn't break it free. So I mounted it on the engine by just the lower bolt and made use of another ratcheting box wrench to ratchet myself into a peccadillo. The bolt retaining the idler was longer than on the original part and it was hitting the engine mount (damn that thing!) What's more, because the tool ratcheted, I could not now retighten the bolt to free it. After staring at it in that special "oh shit, now what?" way, it occured to me that I could remove the one mounting bolt and jiggle it free. And so I did. Once the part was freed I was able to remove the pulley from it and get it installed, checking first to see if the shorter original bold would work with it. It would so I had a plan B if I couldn't get the original bolt back in.

Putting the new part in sans pulley was a breeze, the long 10mm box wrench working beautifully. I remounted the pulley on it, rejecting the new bolt out of hand in favor of the shorter original. No point wasting time on a lost cause. However replacing that other idler pulley proved more challenging. At first I tried to use fingers to move its mounting bolt into place. No hope of gettin close. Next I tried a pickup claw. This got the bolt where it needed to be, but every attempt to thread it resulted in the bolt landing on the floor. This happened about 10 times. Finally I shimmed it into a box wrench with electrical tape and got it threaded on the 5th attempt. WooHoo! It took me ten more minutes to get the bolt tightened down (remember, engine mount cancels super primate powers) and at last I could mount the new belt. This is always an adventure, but it was another task made easier with the splash guards out. I failed three times to do it from the top, but working from the bottom, I got it on the first try.



Then came the moment of truth. I turned the engine on and loaded the electrical system and fired up the AC, not a peep, and no parts went flying. I put the splashguards back in, remounted the tire and drove morgan1 and me up to Baker's Square for a celebratory dinner.

Comments

[lordrunningclam.livejournal.com]

Good job! I really don't like working on cars myself, but I've always done it. It was like an epiphany to me when I had car trouble soon after I left school and somebody suggested that I could actually have *somebody else* fix the thing. The last time I tried to do something on a car I got so frustrated with my old craftsman tool set with multiple missing sockets that I went out and bought a new socket set.

I used to have a Ford F150 with a 300ci straight six that was a joy to work on. I could sit on the fender with my feet dangling in the engine compartment to replace the spark plugs and parts for it were common as dirt and dirt cheap. Now I look under the hood on a new car and I can barely tell where the engine is. I can barely get my hand in there anywhere, never mind a tool.

[richardf8]

The engine's the thing with the carmaker's logo on it. The most frightening engine compartment I ever saw belonged to an 80's vintage honda accord with Power Steering, Air Conditioning, Automatic Transmission and Cruise Control. That thing's accessories took up more volume in the engine compartment than the engine itself.

My Dad's Chevy Impala had an engine compartment you could crawl into. It wasn't the easiest to work on, but it sure beat the snot out of today's overstuffed compartments.