Chevrolet Pontiac Saturn Serpentine Belt DIY Solutions BEP00332

Hi, I'm Don from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and the next time you need a part for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to remove and reinstall a serpentine belt on this 2006 Chevy Impala. It has a 3.5 liter V6. It's pretty straight forward. You'll need 10mm and13mm sockets, a ratchet, a 3/8 drive, and either a breaker bar or a ratchet handle with a pipe for some extra leverage.

To start, there are two 10mm nuts that hold the coolant overflow tank, and we'll remove those. With those removed, just pull the coolant tank up and out and just put it to the back out of the way. You want to remove the belt fully, so you'll need to remove this bracket here with a 13mm socket. We'll just fast-forward as we take that out. You just have to unbolt that bracket and let it hang free.

The tensioner is located right here, and it actually has a square hole in the middle of it. Right here, we're demonstrating on the new tensioner, you put a 3/8 drive bar or ratchet in to move the tensioner, and now you can see Don is putting that 3/8 inch breaker bar right down in and getting it into the hole in the tensioner, then he'll push clockwise on the tensioner, and then reach back and flip the belt off the alternator. Slowly remove the tension from the tensioner, remove your wrench, then the belt is just a little bit it's just wrapped around all the pulleys so you have to just give it some slack and pull it up and off of the pulleys.

Now this is very important, this is a diagram for your belt. What you'll want to do is feed it down around the crank in the A/C pulleys first, and then you're going to try and pull it towards the middle on the left side, and then up and around. There's really no great way to video this, so we're just going to watch Don as he puts it down in. He'll feed the belt way down and through that clip that you unbolted. He'll feed it way down and he'll get it, like I said, on the lower pulleys first. You can see he gets it on that side pulley with his right hand, and then he feeds it way down in to the crank pulley down below.

Now, once he's got it down in, he's now pulling it in towards the middle so he's got to loop down around the lower pulleys. He's pulling a loop into the middle to get it onto the water pump. Now he's got it up and around, so at this point we'll go back to the diagram. He's got the belt on the lower two pulleys and that middle one, and also on the right side. I'm going to fast-forward here as Don keeps working with that belt. Basically, what he's doing is he's getting it properly aligned onto all the pulleys, except for the alternator, which is the top left as your looking at the engine from the passenger's side it's the top left accessory. He gets the belt onto all the pulley except for the alternator.
Now, he's just taking a lot of care, making sure all the belt's on properly, and pulls that tensioner counterclockwise. He's got the wrench in there, pulls it clockwise, and gets the belt up onto the alternator. Then he'll do a check of all the pulleys, and make sure the belt's on correctly.

Now you can put that 13mm bolt back into the bracket. Now reinstall your radiator bottle, there's a groove and a pin down at the bottom, just make sure that goes on and the two top tabs go over the studs, and tighten up those 10mm nuts.

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