Serpentine Belt DIY Solutions BEP00327

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace a serpentine belt on this Equinox from 2008, which has the 3.4 liter V6, same as the Torrent with the 3.4 liter. Tools you'll need are flat blade screwdriver; 10mm, 15mm and 18mm sockets; with ratchets and extensions; and a 3/8" drive ratchet or flex handle.

To get to it, you do have to remove the intake tube. It's not too difficult. There's a plug here. Just take a little tab, pull it to the side, pull that off, and then, there's two clamps to loosen. I'm going to speed this up a little bit. What I found actually is you only need to loosen up the clamp that's on the engine side or closer to the engine and then you pull the tube off the engine. That's actually good enough. Now, there are a couple of clips you just pull off with your thumbs. Lift this up. To get your air box up and off, there's a little safety clamp here that you'll want to remove carefully. Then, you can disconnect this harness. Pull this right out. Your 10mm bolt right back here, remove that. Probably take your air cleaner out. Now your air box can come right up. Pull it back. There is a harness right here. Just move that back and take your air box out.

Then, you want to put a jack right underneath the engine. With your air box out of the way, you want to remove your engine mounts and that's why you're supporting the vehicle with the jack. It's 18mm nuts on the outside and then 15mm bolts on the engine side. Remove those two nuts then jack the engine up a little bit. Remove the 15mm bolts and then you can remove, you'll see, the mounts.

In this next part, it's a little difficult to see what I'm doing so I kind of drew an arrow. The arrow points to your belt tensioner. You can see down at the bottom, if you're looking at it with good enough resolution, that the tensioner has a small 3/8 square hole in it. So you take a 3/8 drive flex handle. If you jack up the engine enough, you can probably get a regular ratchet handle on there and you put it into that square hole and you'll see what you do with it.

Now, here's your tensioner. You're going to need kind of a, it's a flexible handle like this. Basically, you'd want to put the handle in. Flex that into the tensioner. Push it in. Then you're going to pull up on your handle and let tension off the belt. Slip the belt off. Slowly let your handle back down and out. Now, you can just pull your belt from all the different pulleys. You've just got to reach down, get it off the A/C pulley as well as reach down, and get it off your crank pulley and release. Pull it up and out. To get the belts on, this is an important piece of information. This is kind of my own homemade belt routing diagram. Basically what you're going to do is you're going to put loops down around the crank and the A/C pulleys which are at the very bottom. They're the hardest ones to get to. Then you're going to route everything except for the top middle idler pulley. You'll leave it on top of that and then pull the tensioner over then route it underneath the idler pulley.

Put the belt back on. You'll want to take a loop and get it down and go around your crank pulley first as well as feed it down around the A/C pulley. Then it comes up to your water pump here and across to the alternator. Make sure it's on your crank and pull it over to this idler pulley here. Also, make sure it's down around your tensioner down here. So, your belt's kind of preliminarily routed down around your crank. Just make sure it's on there correctly. I can see it's a little off, then around your A/C pulley, up to your water pump, around here, around your alternator, down to your tensioner, back around to this idler pulley, and to your crank. The only thing it's not on, right now, is this idler pulley, here. Once we pull on the tensioner, we'll push that down, and put it on. Put your bar in. Pull up on your tensioner. Put your belt down onto this idler pulley. Make sure the alternator is on. Let your tensioner go. With your engine jacked up high enough, you can get that right out.

Now, put your mount back on. Start the bolts. You can let your engine down some. Make sure you get the bolts started first. Speed it up here, some. Start those bolts in. Just make sure the jack is positioned so that the engine is just barely lifting up on that mount and preliminarily tighten those bolts. Those are 15mm bolts. Then let the engine down some and put on the 18mm nuts. Then, preliminarily, tighten them. Then, I'm going to tighten the 18mm nuts to 85 foot-pounds. Then I'm going to tighten the 15mm bolts to 45 foot-pounds.

Now, I'll put my air box back down in. My wiring harnesses go up above. There's two rubber plugs that go into holes in the front, guide them in place, push them forward. Tighten up that bolt nice and firm. Then, make sure you put the pin for the wiring harness back in place. Put the air cleaner back in. Make sure it's seated correctly. Now, it does have a little tab here so it goes in the right way. Put the top to the the air box in first and make sure the harnesses don't get in your way. It's down in place. Put that back on. Lock that one back on. Make sure that's all there. Tighten up. Be sure to reconnect that hose, and on that right there. This little lock inserts from the back like that.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.