So today I helped a friend change his fan belt. (not technically a fan belt, the fan is electric... auxiliary belt, maybe?)
But since when was changing a fan belt a two-man job?
My own car, of a much older and simpler design, is easy as pie to adjust or replace the belt. It's just one bolt, to hold it tensioned, and a bit of wood, for leverage.
This car... from 2004, I think, is rather more ingeniously and annoyingly designed than that.
First of all, every time you change the belt you have to get a new belt tensioner, which adjusts the tension automatically with a very strong spring. It's very clever, but it makes the belt very difficult to fit.
The spring is held back with a pin, which allows you to get the belt on, but the strength of that spring stops you from simply pulling the pin out.
It took us a long while to figure it out, but what you have to do is have one guy with a bit of wood or something levering the tensioner against the spring pressure, (requires some muscle...) while the other guy pulls the pin out. (requires a delicate touch and the flexibility to twist your arm round at an unnatural angle.)
It takes both arms and all your strength to lever the tensioner enough for the pin to loosen. If you're Arnold Swarzenegger , maybe you could lever with just one arm, but Arnie's other arm is too big to wiggle into the engine bay and get the pin out. Its definitely a two man job.
And if we had accidentally pulled the pin out without the fan belt in place, the tensioner would be useless. You'd never be able to turn it back against that hench spring and get the pin back in again. You'd just have to buy another one.
When we finally got that evil little pin out, and let the fan belt take the tension... guess what? The bit of wood we had levered it with got stuck. Now it was tangled into the belt and its many, many pulleys, and the spring didn't want us to take it back.
We almost pushed the belt off the tensioner getting that bit of wood out. if it had come off, my friend would have had to buy another bloody tensioner and done the whole thing over again.
I don't think he would have though. He'd more likely either kill the car, or himself, or both.
Who knew a fan belt change could be so complex and frustrating?
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Car Madness
Non-FictionMy opinions on cars. Might be a bit of a rant book... I'm gonna be rambling about new cars and old, and the people who drive them. I'm British by the way, so I'm focused on cars here in eggland. Although I am a big fan of American muscle cars... And...
