Replacing the serpentine belt: Best way?

[Atari_Prime]

Originally Posted by 1991ZR1

I think the procedure in the manual was to install the belt over and behind the water pump pulley. After the belt is around all the other pulleys, you can pull the belt forward onto the water pump pulley while pulling back on the tensioner. This worked well when I removed and reinstalled the original belt.

Even with that procedure, some belts will not go on. I had a new belt with the exact same part number as the original belt that would not go on. I think the Goodyear belt went on easily without this procedure.

Revisiting a somewhat older topic. I worked with a mechanic friend at the house the other day to install a new serpentine belt. It was relatively easy it seemed to me and I'm not much of a mechanic. The biggest issue that we ran into was the throttle body. There was not enough space between the throttle body and the top gear to get the old belt out or the new one in. So we lossened some of the torx screws holding the throttle body and were able to create enough space to get the belts through the opening. Hardest part was feeding the belts through the bottom area of the engine but that was overcome via a kind of tug-o-war effort over about 5 minutes. Whole job took about 20 minutes start to finish.