[nadthomas]

Well I just picked up a new gatorback belt from autozone, and I was looking over the Ford Tech CD the other day, and it says you have to remove the passenger side wheel ,and something else having to do the the wheel assembly, in order to remove the belt. Is there another way to get at it or is that the best way?

Excuss my lack of technical terms, I don't have the CD with me at the moment to look them up. :biggrin:

 

[PuckPuck]

you could "maybe" do it without removing the wheel..... give it a shot... if not you'll need to remove the wheel and wheel well in order to gain access to the crank pulley and a/c pulley

 

[nadthomas]

Thanks, puckpuck. I just checked my tech cd again and i had it confussed with the alternator removal. For the belt you just need to remove the wheel and splash sheild. Should be pretty easy.

 

[eurocrisp]

Just jack up the passenger front corner and take off the wheel... The inner splash guard is 3 or 4 10mm (iirc) bolts and it just pulls right out. The alternator and AC pump pulleys are now in plain view. When fighting the tensioner to get the belt on, it had come off the pulleys and wasn't seated properly when I let the tensioner go... It would have been very hard to get the belt fitted correctly if I didn't have the wheel well access, and had I started the car in that condition I would have ruined my gatorback.

Make sure you get a friend to help you push on the tensioner, it's a really strong spring.

You can grab a hold of the belt and yank hard, with the pulley leverage you can move it somewhat, but i had to also have my dad push as hard as he could on it with the jack handle and wedge it against the frame of the car. that bought me enough time to make SURE the belt was in all the pulley tracks correctly.

The gatorback sounds neat

edit: You got it :thumbsup: