My water pump decided to take a major leak yesterday. Thank goodness it happened as I was parking. Anyway, it looks pretty straight forward to replace the water pump.

I want to change the serpentine belt as a precaution since I need to remove it to get to the water pump. I noticed it is damn near impossible to slip the belt behind the pulley on the tensioner. (there is about 1/4" clearance between the tensioner pulley and the front timing cover)

JTIS states to remove the tensioner, which is the other issue - for some reason the damn bolt won't budge... seems like the 1/2 short socket (opposed to 13mm short socket) gets a better grip of the bolt but every other bolt on the car is mm sized.

I'm almost resigned to leave the tensioner on for now but any pointers out there on how to get the new serpentine belt installed w/o damaging it?

Any advice would be appreicated - Thanks!

 

When I changed the belt, I don't remember it being too difficult. I do remember that it took some tries to find the right position to get the belt out and back in without forcing it.

 

You can push the tentioner over with a pipe over the handle of a rachet wrench and slip the belt off one of the pulleys. Then remove the pipe and the wrench and take off the rest of the belt. Reverse to replace everything. If you have the plastic thermistat tower, you might want to change that while your there. Read up on these procedures because some of the nuts on the back of the tower are hard to get at without certain wrenches . The updated tower is metal!

 

chucky60 - thanks for the feedback. I was finally able to get the tensioner off - I had to use a 13mm/6 point - 1/2 drive socket to get the bolt going. Thanks for the tip on the metal thermostat housing - I'm definitely going with the aluminum version even though my plastic thermostat housing checks out.

On another note - I am changing the by-pass hose as it was buldging (pic attached) ordered by-pass hose and seals for the cross over pipe yesterday - I took off the cross pipe and there was a piece of brittle plastic literally absent. It was sealed with the "rubber seal" but that's getting changed out too.

Looks like whomever had this car before me ran this car hot at one point - well, I'll get everything changed out and be good to go...