Following the VolvoSpeed / Bay13 instructions and with a little help from you guys regarding pulling the serpentine belt, it went very well with no surprises.

The car has 143,000 miles and had the belt changed at 69,000 back in Jan '01. I have photos of various things including the new and old belts side by side. The old belt looked in perfect condition. No lateral cracking, mangled teeth etc, and had stretched about 1/2".

I also replaced the serpentine tensioner pulley, the serp idler pulley and was going to replace both the T-belt tensioner pulley and it's idler as well. The T-belt tensioner pulley assembly is held on with a torx bolt larger than any I had so it stayed on. The bearing was in excellent shape. No wiggle, rumble or grinding. The T-belt idler comes off with two 10mm bolts but it too was in excellent shape and the bearing is a large one, almost the size of the roller itself. The replacement unit has a much smaller bearing so I kept the old one.

Something I saw on Groton's site was the serp belt comes in two lengths and with the longer one you get more of a wrap around the alternator. I ordered the standard and only when I pulled the old one off did I discover it was the longer unit. Getting the serp belt on is a bear and I found that even with the tensioner pinned, I had to back off the tensioner mounting bolts to get the belt over the pulleys. The easiest way was to have the serp belt on all the shouldered pulleys (crank, alt, a/c, ps) and have it almost on it's idler which has no shoulder. Then with the tensioner mount loosened I could slide it right over the idler, tighten the tensioner's mount and pull the pin holding the tensioner back.

As far as the T-belt, the tiny notch in the crank pulley is tough to find but using the zoom on my digital camera and a bright light I found it the second crank revolution.

To compress the T-belt tensioner I used an old double screw wood clamp as my vise is already packed for the move. Note that when compressing the T-belt tensioner if you don't use a small nut as a shim against the piston, when the vise (or clamp) compresses to the edge of the tensioner body, the piston won't be in far enough to pin it in place. Btw, I first pinned it with a nail which if promptly bent so I used a hardened hex wrench which worked fine.

After I was finished and started the car for a drive I noticed the lifters were all a little noisy. Probably from the camshafts being rotated w/o oil pressure present. After a couple of minutes running the car was just smooth and quiet as I can remember.

Also changed the oil, vacuum line elbows, plug wires, (did the plugs recently) and even the driver's windshield wiper arm! Groton has them now and this new one actually wipes all the way across the glass! I'd bent the original several times but it was tired.

(Cut and paste the following pic urls into your browser.)

Nice place to work complete with $12 box fan

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/HPIM0083.jpg

Serp tensioner off, covers off, lets roll

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/HPIM0081.jpg

Notch on crank sprocket, tiny

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/HPIM0077.jpg

What the throttle beauty cover will do to the vac tree at 130,000mi.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/HPIM0095.jpg

Compressing the tensioner

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/HPIM0092.jpg

Old belt New belt

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/HPIM0087.jpg

My other toys

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/eroman/R4andDD.jpg


Cheers,
Erwin in Memphis... for now.