Greetings!
New to the forum, and spent the last 1-1/2 hours reading posts - what a great forum with a TON of info. Glad I found ya! I'm on my 3rd Bonnie - a loaded '97 SSEi w/Series II, and blew my accessory belt tonight due to a seized idler pulley (and damaged the SC belt in collateral damage). Got both belts and two idler pulleys (the other squeaks a little - just a little PM) and a tensioner tool kit from Autozone at 8:45pm - gotta love that place.
My question is this - the pulley that seized is right in front of the engine mount - kind of between the coolant and crank pulleys and a little to the front. I haven't taken anything apart yet, but it looks like I'd have to move the engine or completely remove the mount to get at the torx bolt for the pulley.
All the info I've read makes it sound so easy ("remove the engine mounting bracket lower nut, stud and spacer"). What am I missing? My mount is sideways, with the 18mm nut to the rear. After I remove the stud and spacer should I/will I be able to raise the motor enough to get at that bolt? Nothing that I've read so far seems to address this clearly.
I'll attach a pic if I can - I put a little note thingy by the bad pulley.
Thanks in advance for any help here - I wanna get this done right the first time.
Peace!

Hey I just wanted to say welcome to the forum, I am sorry i'm not really familiar with the older cars, but by saying this I am keeping this up in the recent posts so the guys with experience with this will find this faster for ya!

Hey for the welcome, Trent. Nice ride in the pic!
Just as a clarification to those who are scratching their heads at the pic, yes, the idler that blew is on the supercharger belt, but it blew the accessory belt off and only chewed up the SC belt. Luckily it blew only a few blocks from home and I limped it 1/4 mile under power and was able to shut it down and coast the last 1/4 mile into the garage. One advantage of living near the bottom of a hill, I guess...

Your mission...as your car has chosen it for you:... (cool music)

Jack the passengerside of the car and rip off the tire.
Pull the front of the two wheel well splash shields
Reach your hand in where the mount attaches to the body (from inside the wheel well) and loosen the 2 15mm bolts. Do not remove them, only loosen
Remove the 18mm nut (or stud if you are lucky enough for it to come out as one piece) from the bottom postion on the engine side of the mount. (Also doing this from the wheel well.)
Put tire back on or support car on a jack stand.
Untension belts
Put a block of wood on the jack and position it under the oil pan.
Unbolt the power steering pump by accessing the bolts through the holes in the pulley at 12 and 6 on the clock. 13mm bolts. Lower the pump gently, the oil pressure sensor is below it and can get broken if you drop the pump. I prefer to leave the bolts in the pump housing because it'* a pain to take them out and get them back in place. They will stay in the pump w/o worry.
Standing on passenger side remove the nut from the main bolt connecting the engine side and body side brackets. 15mm and 18mm
Jack the engine sligntly to remove pressure from that bolt and remove the bolt.
Lower motor about an inch.
Remove two 15mm bolts on the body side mount. Looking down at the mount, they are straight on pointing at the ground.
Remove body side of mount (yes fight that plastic pos that'* holding the AC lines)
Raise engine about 1-2 inches with the jack.
Remove the two 15mm nuts holding the engine side bracket to the engine
Remove the studs for the engine bracket, paying attention where the spacer on the power steering stud falls. There is another spacer on the bottom bolt you already took out.
Remove the engine side bracket.
You may now change the pulley that was behind the bracket.
I like to sit the belts in place and get the bracket situated again. Making sure the belts are in the right position.
Both belts only loop around the bottom of the engine side bracket.

Once you do this procedure a time or two..it'* not all that bad. FWIW the Riviera has the body in the way of removing the bottom engine side bracket bolt. You must lower the motor a long way to weasel parts in/out. It'* a mess compared to the Bonne.

Follow Bills procedure, it works well. I did that about a month ago. Not to hard. I'll have to get a write up done.

Mission (no longer) impossible. Wow - can't get much clearer directions than that. Now to put it into action.
Thanks a TON for the help Bill - 40K+ posts?!? Holy ****!!! I hope to be able to return the favor to the forum, but that'* pretty intimidating.
You have a '97 too, eh? Dang I love those cars! Found mine in 11/08 for $3K and it'll be tough to ever get me to part with it. Every bit as nice as a newer "luxury sedan" but faster and more comfortable. not that I beat her, but its nice to know she'll respond when I need her to.
Thanks again - peace!

You can return the favor, while you are doing it...please get a million pictures that detail the steps. Copy the steps from above and add in the pics. We will then look it over and move it into Techinfo.

Taking pics can take up a lot of time, all help to make the forum better is always appreciated.

Got mine in 06 with 133K on the clock for $3300. Now I've done too much to it. Over the top was about 6-8 large mods back.

I have a lot of pictures, but a few more wont hurt.

SUCCESS! Finished last night, within 24 hours of initial problem, thanks largely to the good advice. Thanks a MIL!! Ran like a champ from the first crank!
I didn't see the pic response until I had the ps pump off, but took a bunch since then and during re-assembly. I think 17 pix total, but some are repetitive/so-so quality. Some are pretty good, though. Can you PM me with an email address to send them to? I dont want to clog up the forum board with a bunch of pix that may or may not be useful. I labeled the file names, but they'd be a lot better with added arrows and notes, similar to the shaded areas in other threads, etc.
Just a couple of minor notes to consider, too - the 15mm body-side mount bolts that were accessed through the wheel well didn't need to be removed - the mount was slotted allowing me to remove it by lifting it up after just loosening them and removing the top bolts (thank God - they were TIGHT!)
Also, the (3) engine-side mount studs needed a 1/4" and 5/16" socket to remove. They were probably metric, but those worked well for me.
A good suggestion for newbs like me - buy/borrow a 15mm box wrench for this job, especially for the engine mount bolts in the wheel well. Nothing else would fit in there.
I also replaced all three smooth idler wheels. The top two were reverse-threaded, and the bottom was a standard thread. I know knowing which way they spin should tell you this, but once the belts are off that can be tough to determine.
Thanks again for the help, and let me know the best way to get those pix to the right person.

Just a quick followup to this for those that run with a fail-safe thermostat, I found after my test drive that my water temp stayed much lower than normal. Even though I just limped home 1/2 mile after throwing my accessory belt, my bottom-end water temp rose high enough to trip the stat.
While you're at the parts store getting a new belt and whatever, might as well save a trip and get another stat (only) if you have a fail-safe.