Looking for a little wisdom and advice on a problem I encountered over the weekend. Upon backing out of a parking space I heard a dreaded SQUEEEL and a SNAP sound. Unfortunately, I pretty much went through this drill a few years ago so I kinda knew what to expect.

This time both my belts were lying like a pile of snakes and off the pulleys. I observed that the supercharger belt was shredded pretty good but the accessory looked fine. I cut the supercharger belt and rerouted the accessory (good thing they put the diagram in the owners manual!). First time I ever did that myself and luckily I had a socket set with me in the car to push the tensioner pulley down to install the belt. Started it up and drove it home with no further issue.

Since it was dark in the parking garage I couldn't see what happened but as you can see in the pictures it looks like my tensioner pulley (i might be wrong, though) froze and shredded from the inside out. Anyway, feeling confident I thought it wouldn't be a big deal to pull off the rest of the pulley but with that big mount in front of the pulley there doesn't look like a way to get a tool in there without removing the mount.

I left the pictures from the side and top views for your review. I appreciate any advice you could give me. I would love to do the work myself if it'* not a big deal. It looks like it'* not but I'm fearing I'm going to have to remove that mount to get to it.

Had the car 10 years now and she still runs like day 1. Got around 160,000 miles and it would be great to see it roll to 200k without any further issues.

So with that...

Does this mount need to be removed to get to this pulley?
Is the pulley a big deal to remove and replace?
Assuming everything is fine at this point, by driving the car without the blower belt should I be concerned about anything else?
Am I better off letting a mechanic do the work?

Thanks,

Brian

my belt did the same last week tuesday , I took mine to my mechanic and had him do the job , you do not need to take off the mount , but is is tricky to change , you have to go under the car take off part of the plastic guard by the wheel , and take off a bolt under there to work on it...

Well, I hadn't had time to work on this until today and I see from the response (or lack of), this probably isn't that big of a deal. In any case, I wasn't really even thinking of working on this today but you know how that goes, one minute you're just looking under the hood, the next minute you're grabbing for tools.

I had bought the belts the day this mess happened so with this great New England weather I thought I'd at least get a good belt on the accessories. I probably wouldn't have done it if I was still in Michigan because of the wonderful humidity that lingers around this time of year.

Anyway, thanks JusJoeKool for the info. That helped to identify what I needed to pull off for the belt install. Once I had the bolt and spacer out I slipped off the old and re-assessed the pulley that was broke. Figured out how to pull the whole unit out and wah-la. I'm thinking I'll just go for the whole unit instead of the pulley. That belt really got in there.

With that, I figure I'm going to replace the other pulleys so I'll have to order some parts. For now, I just re-installed the unit and will wait when I have time on a good afternoon to complete the job.

sorry i took so long to reply , no problem for the advise any time ...good luck with the replacement of the parts....it is 6:43 am in canada....