1992 Mercury Sable V6 3.8L Serpentine Belt Idler Pulley TRQ BPA03863

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In this video, we're going to show you how to replace the upper idler pulley on this 2008 Chevy Equinox. It's the same as any Equinox with a 3.4-liter, and it's also the same on the Torrent. It's pretty easy once you get the parts out of the way such as the air box and the engine mount. Tools you'll need are a flat blade screwdriver, 10mm, 15mm, and 18mm socket with ratchets and extensions, and a 3/8"? drive ratchet or flex handle.

To get to it, you have to remove the intake tube, which is not too difficult. There's a plug here. You just take a little tab, move it to the side, pull that off, and then there's two clamps to loosen. I'm going to speed this up a little bit. What I found actually is you only need to loosen up the clamp that's on the engine side or closer to the engine, and then you pull the tube off the engine. That's actually good enough.

Now there are a couple of clips you just pull off with your thumbs. You can lift this up. To get your air box up and off, there's a little safety clamp here that you'll want to remove carefully. Then you can disconnect this harness and pull this right out. There's a 10mm bolt right back here, and you can remove that. Probably take your air cleaner out, and now your air box will come right up. Pull it back and out. There is a harness right here, you just pull that and out. Take your air box out.

You want to put a jack right underneath the engine. With your air box out of the way, you want to remove your engine mount, and that's why you're supporting the vehicle with the jack. It's 18mm nuts on the outside and then 15mm bolts on the engine side; remove those two nuts. Then jack the engine up a little bit, remove the 15mm bolts, and then you can remove the mount.

In this next part, it's a little difficult to see what I'm doing, so I kind of drew an arrow. The arrow points to your belt tensioner. You can see down at the bottom, if you're looking at it in good enough resolution, that the tensioner has a small 3/8"? square hole in it. So you take a 3/8"? drive flex handle. If you jack up the engine enough, you could probably get a regular ratchet handle on there, and you put it into that square hole. You'll see what you do with it.

Now here's your tensioner, and you're going to need a flexible handle like this. Basically, you just want to stick the handle in, flex that into the tensioner, and then push it in. Then you can pull up on your handle and let the tension off the belt, pull the belt off, and slowly let your handle back down and out.

In this shot, you'll notice the belt is gone. To replace any of the idler pulleys, you really don't have to remove your belt all the way, you can just loosen it and then take the idler pulleys off and back on. If you do remove it, I have a diagram later in the video that shows you how to get it back on.

To change this idler, generally you can feel and see if there's any play in them. They are pretty easy to change; it's just a 15mm bolt. Then you pull this apart and use any of the appropriate parts on your new pulley. This one is in fine shape, so I'm just going to put it back in. We'll speed up here as I just thread that bolt in, then use my 15mm socket and ratchet to tighten it up. You tighten them to 30 to 35 foot-pounds, tight but not over tight.

Next up, we're going to put the belt back on. I am going to pick it up just from having the belt preliminarily routed. Here's a diagram to help you route it if you either took your belt off or if it fell off a couple of pulleys and you weren't sure how to get it back on. You're going to put your bar in, pull up on your tensioner, put your belt down onto this idler pulley, and make sure it's on the alternator well enough. Let your tensioner go.

With your engine check, you can probably get that right out. Now put your mount back on and start the bolts. You can let your engine down some. Make sure you get the bolts started first. Speed it up here some. I'll start those bolts in, just make sure the jack is positioned so that the engine is just barely lifting up on that mount, and preliminarily tighten those bolts, which are 15mm bolts. Then let the engine down some, put on the 18mm nuts, and then preliminarily tighten them. Then I'm going to tighten the 18mm nuts to 85 foot-pounds, and then I'm going to tighten the 15mm bolts to 45 foot-pounds.

Now I'll put my air box back down in, and make sure my wiring harnesses go up above. Now there are two rubber plugs that go into the holes in the front; guide them in place, and push them forward. Tighten up that bolt nice and firm, and then make sure you put the pin for the wiring harness back in place. Put the air cleaner back in, and make sure it's seated correctly, and it does have a little tab here, so it goes in the right way. Put the outside air box in first, make sure the harnesses don't get in your way, put it down in place, and put the clip back on. Clamp that one back on, and make sure that's all good and tighten up the clips. Be sure to reconnect that hose, and that right there. Then this little lock inserts from the back like that.

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