Rewind to last Sunday. I’d washed the car, waxed the lot and was just about to head round to Kyle’s for those photos. I started the car up and out from the engine bay came the horrible screech of a loose belt. *grumble* I was off out though so I told myself I’d tension it later.

That didn’t happen.

I’ve been driving to work for the last few weeks after suffering a bit of a back injury and although that’s got nothing to do with the actual failure, it stopped it from causing any major damage. On Thursday I got to work first, pulled up at the gates only to hear a *tick, tick, tick* coming from the engine bay. Hmm. Gate opened, car parked I popped the bonnet and instantly saw the auxiliary belt was minutes, or seconds away from flying off. It was holding on by one, maybe two ribs so I instantly stopped the engine. How can the belt move that much though? I’ve never had one loosen itself that much before! Honestly, I had no idea how it had managed to work its way loose so I started to thread it back on. Then I noticed the damage. Something had been rubbing it directly down the middle and almost eaten right through the belt. That something could well have been the tensioner… It wasn’t where it was meant to be. Instead it was flopped over on top of the belt.

This is the mysterious failure and the cause of the loose belt. Somehow it had left the centre coller on the shaft it sits on and worked it’s way over the bolt holding the collar in place. Once it had come off, well all tension was gone. It wasn’t just that one failure though as the lower bolt decided to snap. When I was trying to get the top mount relocated the bottom bolt decided to shear off leaving my stranded. I can only guess (as I haven’t played with this part) that the previous owner(s) of the car have replaced the bolt, not put a washer on, which hasn’t locked the top bush in place. While that has been working it’s way loose, it’s put strain on the bottom bolt which eventually snapped.

Great. Well at least it all failed where I have a nice unit to work in.

Looking at it, the bolt that snapped is on a pivoting bracket which is attached to the block via one bolt. That must mean a simple job of removing one bolt, drilling out the old bolt and fitting new bolts and belt right? Wrong.

After work on Friday, with a new belt ready to go on, I set about removing the one bolt on the bracket. There’s no way that bolt was coming out without moving the engine. It’s path to freedom was obstructed by the chassis. This meant I had to mess about removing engine mounts and lifting the engine to free it.

Three bolts holding this mount down on the drivers side.

Strip out the air box and battery to get to the four bolts holding down the mount on the passenger side.

Then crawl underneath and undo the two holding this front mount to the subframe.

And crawl even further under to get to the four bolts holding the rear mount down. (Where I found a gearbox oil seal leaking…)

With that I could lift the engine, bit by bit, jut enough to free the bolt from the chassis. I just hope nothing got crushed in the process. It was a bit of a lift and pray moment. Anyway, that happened this morning. I gave up half way through last night and started again this morning. Fresh eyes and all that.

With the bracket out I could inspect the damage and drill out the old bolt. It wasn’t a smooth break and my original idea was to just run a 8mm drill bit through the hole, clearing out all the old bolt and threads. Before I went ahead with that idea though I gave my Snap On bolt extractor kit a go. It says to drill out a pilot hole and then tap in the reverse thread bit and wind the bolt out. Well. It’s a load of bollocks. The drill bit was utter wank and I had to use works Cobalt bits and then the Snap On “extractor” part completely failed by stripping itself in the process of trying to wind the old bolt out. I just gave up and ran a 8mm bit through the hole. Job done.

Well the bracket still needed to be reattached, engine bolt back in place, accessories refitted and belt fitted but it was the home straight now. That, of course, turned into a nightmare too. Refitting the bracket, mounts, air box and battery were a piece of piss but the belt… The correct way of fitting the belt is with the tensioner in place. You’re meant to wind the belt around as many of the pulleys as you can and then use a soft aluminium, badly shaped nut to act as a mount for the lever you’re going to use to compress the tensioner before sliding on the rest of the belt. Simple.

Well I tried that and ran out of hands. Not only that but the soft nut on the bracket decided it didn’t even like my correctly sized, 6 sided socket and rounded slightly so I had to call for back up. Kyle popped over to offer an extra pair of hands and quite honestly, I wouldn’t have managed it without those hands.

Before he’d arrived I tried fitting the belt another way. Belt on first and tensioner second. Nope. We tried “shocking” it into place (on the top shaft) but everytime we neared success the collar in the bush popped out. We tried clamping the tensioner while it was in the car but there just wasn’t any room. We physically couldn’t apply enough force with our hands to compress the tensioner and trying to be clever and using cable ties to lock the compressed tensioner in place failed. It looked promising but the cable ties kept sliding off.

This went on for quite a while….

I then went back to the original method, slipped the belt off, refitted the tensioner and had another go. We managed to get a bit of grip on that shitty bolt to compress the tensioner slightly but it still seemed to tight to get the belt on. I had a slight brainwave though. Crawling under the car, having Kyle hang onto the lever to keep as much tension off the belt as he could I tried to fit the belt. It wouldn’t go straight on but I did mnagae to slowly grip a small part while rotating the other pulleys slowly. It worked. Bit by bit the belt fell into place until finally it was settled.

I never want to have to do that again. That one belt runs the air conditioning, alternator and water pump. While I can live without air con, and can maybe get away with small trips on no alternator, I need the water pump! They should have just kept it simple like the layout on my Civic. Seperate belts and tensioning done with a big bar and a spanner. Simple.

It’s done now though. New bolts. New belt. No future problems hopefully. It has left scars on my freshly painted rocker cover though…. *grrrr*