Boreas, I can understand your frustration when many things seem to go wrong at the same time. Truth is, with and older used car, it may very well be that the seller had not noticed anythinmg specifically wrong while he owned it.

Two potential reasons this could be (OK, maybe three):

- Some car owners have little knowledge of cars or care little for their cars and consequently don't notice things going wrong until they are catastrophic. They might truly not know that there is an issue or a pending issue.

- An older car with those miles may have just been at the cusp of needing some major maintenance items done when you bought it.

- Other possibility - Seller may have lied or "sugar coated" the condition to make the sale.

All real possibilities.

I hope you can get that elbow replaced and move on with enjoying the car (or your Mom can enjoy it, lol).

Yea, all that needs to be removed is the tensioner, i've just confirmed it. It would have been really dumb for GM to have designed it any other way. So some good news for me that this isnt going to be a large and expensive task. A big sigh of relief for me. Thanks guys!

Do you mean tensioner or accessory bracket? The tensioner is bolted to the accessory bracket and moves to tension the belt.

Tensioner, the coolant flows through there.