you guys are awesome. thank you for the help. now it'* time to do the repair this weekend

Let us know if you encounter questions during the repair.

...well.. looks like i ran into a bit of a small problem here. i went to the parts shop here (Lordco Autoparts) and was able to get the pulleys. I figured it would be a good idea to just go ahead and replace all three pulleys. The 3.5" smooth idler pulley which is located above the main drive pulley had fallen off I guess b/c the only thing left on the bolt was the bearing from the pulley lol. I was able to remove that bolt by spraying a lot of penetrating oil and attaching a lever to my ratchet for leverage to get it off.

I then moved over to the mangled and melted 3" grooved idler pulley located just above the AC compressor pulley. Unfortunately I wasn't as successful with this one and it looks like the threads on the torx bolt are destroyed now while I was trying to unscrew the bolt. Stupid question time.. is there a way to remove this bolt now somehow? Thanks again guys.

If you can remove the bracket you can drill it out from behind. Then use a easy out. although it might come out while you drill it.

This is probably too old now, but for future members who encounter this same problem.

This happened on my 96 SSEi, one or both of the two pulleys at the front (one grooved and one backside) went. I think the grooved pulley was the SC belt tensioner, and it is a LEFT HAND THREAD!!

Found that out the hard way. It needs to be left hand thread as you need to cycle the tensioner by the torx bolt in order to install the belt. I broke it, tapped it out to the next size and put some loctite to hold it. Worked good enough to get it all back together, but had to remove the whole bracket with the coils.

The next one to go is the "pulley on a stick"...the larger, back side idler lower down. No fun on the 99 and older cars as the motor mount needs to come off. Enjoy!