How to Replace Serpentine Belt 2001-05 Volkswagen Passat

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In this video, we'll show you how to remove and reinstall the lower serpentine belt which transfers power from the crank to the air conditioning compressor. You do need to raise the vehicle so you'll need a jack and jack stands. You'll also need a 6 millimeter Allen wrench as well as a 17 millimeter socket with a slow profile breaker bar and a pair of pliers.

Okay, so you do access this belt and tensioner from underneath the car, so you'll need to jack up and support the front of your car. This belt is easiest to see from up underneath the car. Come right up under here and you could see, here's your A/C compressor. You can see here's you're A/C compressor and here's the belt. This is the tensioner right here. Up above is the crank pulley. Your tensioner is held on by two bolts. Let's see. Here's one here and then I can't really see it but it's not this. This is actually what you grab onto with the 17 millimeter wrench to tighten the tensioner. Right in behind, you'll feel another bolt just like this one and they're 6 millimeter Allen bolts. Here's my 6 millimeter Allen wrench. If you have a longer one, that's probably the best thing. I put that on there, then I take a wrench. Put it on there for some extra leverage and loosen this bolt. Loosen it a couple of turns. Now, I'm up on my bolt up here. There's not really a good way to film this. I'm just going to speed it up here. Like is said, there's no good way to film it. You just get your Allen wrench on there and use the other wrench for some leverage and loosen up the bolt up top just a couple of turns to loosen up the tensioner. It kind of loosened a little bit. You can see I can just push that tensioner up. That'll come off the A/C pulley here and up and off your crank pulley up on the top there.

Reinstall the belt. They don't really make it easy, here. We're going to push up in and reach up in and pull it on to the crank pulley first and you got to kind of twist the belt around, and pull it up in there. Put it up and on and then put it around onto the A/C compressor. Make sure it's on the A/C compressor. Reach out and make sure it's in the grooves on the crank pulley and then pull it down onto your tensioner pulley here. Now, I'm going to take a 17 millimeter socket and a flat bar. I'm going to put that up on tensioner where there's kind of bolt shape protrusion. Then you can see I push on this and that tightens up my belt. I'm going to actually just go up here, get my Allen wrench into my mounting bolt. What I'm doing here is using the Allen wrench to get that screw just a little bit tight then grab a hold of that bar and put some force on it to tighten the belt up and then tighten the Allen wrench bolt as much as I can to hold it in place. With my Allen wrench right there, I'm going to grab it with a pair of pliers and use these pliers and tighten it up. Then just tighten up this one here. Then just use some pliers to get the leverage and tighten it up.

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