Hey, my '95 SE (Series II 3800) bonne'* serpentine belt fell off and was partially shredded. Weve been working on it for 2 days now, and its set to go in the shop next tuesday, but i think we can do this ourselves, and save some time and money (not to mention experience... knowledge is power). I used search to find the process, but before the new belt is put on, we are trying to determine the way in which the belt is put on. By examining some pictures ive come up with only bits and pieces, and the diagram we looked at in a service manual didnt work. Every time we put it on in a way that makes sense it has at lesat 2 inches slack, and it seems unlikely that it would have stretched that far without completely snapping. Can anyone help me out with a diagram, or perhaps a picture that shows the whole belt layout. Thanks.

did you put it around the tensioner pulley? that is a key part. there is also the a/c compressor, the water pump, the powersteering pump, the camshaft pulley and the tensioner pulley that takes the slack out of the belt. it isnt that hard to do. just follow the routing pattern and when it gets to the point where the slack is, take your tire wrench from the trunk and turn the tensioner pulley and put the belt over it. after that, it will take the two inch slack out of it.

yeah if you dont have it just right it will not work right

yea, thats mainly the problem. I havent been able to find a diagram of it, so i have no way of knowing how it goes on. and yes, when ive tried it its gone around all six pulleys.

Two things... There should be a diagram of it on top of the radiator plastic cover. Also, you have to remove the motor mount to put it on. Did you do that?

i had no diagram on mine so i bought a chiltons'

Well, thanks to your help mission accomplished. I used a floor jack to support the motor (not sure if this was necessary, though) and removed the rod between the motor mount and the motor, so that I could remove the old belt. I needed a deep 18 mm socket and E-10 reverse torx to do that. The new belt kept slipping off the tensioner pulley and then I noticed the water pump was leaking and its pulley was totoally wobbly. I put a new water pump in but found out that the power steering unit has to be removed to remove the rearmost water pump bolt. Read some posts about the PS removal, only pull it out far enough to get the last WP bolt out. After reeassembly all is fine.

Regarding the belt routing. My library'* Chilton only had a 'typical' serpentine belt routing diagram. I found a picture of the specific belt routing on cardomain (see URL link below). One link for SSE and one for SSEi. Also, when the job was almost complete, I discovered that the belt routing was shown in the OWNERS MANUAL .


http://home.neo.rr.com/fieros/3800/belts.jpg

http://www.cardomain.com/member_page...60_40_full.jpg