Only the sleeve needs to come out. I just put the belt on the sleeve and gave it a tug. It popped right out. I have to agree this is a stupid way to make this attachment but I think GM was thinking about how to secure the torque coming out of the engine. Not about changing the belt since it only need changed probably 3 times in the life of the car.

If anyone is wondering, the torq head is a T50 and you can get a specific female (inverted) socket that will fit right on there at Sears. The socket cost $7, a regular socket would prolly work, but we have 2 */C'ed 3800s in our family, so it is a worth while investment for me.

I cant wait to get these belts changed this weekend!!!

Jay

I've seen a lot of engines and worked on a few. Ford, Honda, GM, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Audi/VW. This engine has some design flaws but it'* a heck of a lot easier to work on then some engines out there.

That would be cool.. maybe one of the mods wants to add that into the techinfo so whomever wants to do the belt will know to get a Torx T50 socket ( inverted.. female end ) to move the mount.. cause I"m sure everyone has to change it sooner or later

I did my belt swap tonight. Here is a break down of the tools I needed.

Small flat head screw driver (like one for glasses)
3/8" drive rachet
18mm Deep Well Socket
5/8" socket
T50 Inverted Torq socket
Needle nose pliers

The small screw driver is to remove the small electrical connector that is right below the sleve that has to be taken out, this way you lessen the chance of damaging the wiring. Use the screw driver to release the tab on the connctor.

The Pliers are to remove the plastic 'trees' that hold the inner fender in.

The rest is straight forward.

Many thanks to "parallelcircuits." Your description of the procedure was nearly perfect.

I did have one small change to the procedure for my wife'* 98SE. In order to get the sleeve out, to remove the belt, it was necessary to disconnect the connector below the sleeve, and remove the sleeve from below (simply dropped into my hand). (same as "karfreek") Thank you as well.

Once again, thanks for making an unpleasant task much easier.

Fred

I also found this thread very helpfull when changing my belt this weekend. Thanks to parallelcircuits for the awesome write-up. Only thing that sucks is I had to search through past posts for 15 minutes before finding this one.

This write-up should be in th tech section!!