If your hands and arms are not small enough to get between engine parts in the lower compartment, you will have trouble out the ***. NO wonder the dealership wants to charge a lot of money to do this job. I'm not even going to begin the novel of what we ran into today but the two major problems we ran into today was the oxidation on the idler pulley's tensioner bolt (which locked the bolt in place and I had to use a lot of strength and care to remove the bolt from the rod) and the idler pulley was put back on incorrectly and it started to smoke. Thanks to iwannabmw for taking his time and having patients with me and the Max today. I had another tuneup day and decided to change my belts before taking another long trip down the NJ for the NE meet on June 9th and it has to be one of the worse jobs to do on the Max. My belts were in bad shaped and thank God they didn't snap from all of the trips I've taken in this car. I'll post pics later.

 

u think that's hard...now imagine there's a supercharger plate in the way.

 

Deezo,

You do realize they take out the wheelwell for this job right? If you changed them by sticking your hands down from the top of the engine..........you are insane

 

yes deezo they are tought to change, i did it so many tiems with my UDP that i can do it easy now. i'd say hour to do both, the idler is tough to do, i found the easiest way is to CUT the stock belts right in half then work with it all. i did mine like 4 times in 4 months with my udp.

 

May I ask why?

 

??????

take the rim off
remove the 2 metal bolts and 2 plastic bolts holding the inner wheel well plastic piece out. and BINGO!! all the access you need.. takes 15 min tops...!!



Deezo..

 

[are you guys kidding me I did mine in lkke 20 mins that was so easy I thought I was working on a honda all ya got to do is loosen the tensioner enough that you can take the belt off completely then put new belt on no removing tires or anything and I have a 2in drop. Well anyways i think the most tedious thing was changing springs cause it was funny though cause im only 5'9 and 160 and I craweld into the trunk to undo the rear shocks I felt like I was a mob victim in the trunk

 

The biggest problem was loosening the tensioner enough so we could get the new belts on. Getting the old one's off was easy. The adjustement that moves the idler pulley up and down was all corroded at the upper half of it's travel. We ended up taking the thing off the car so it was easier to work back and forth. The pulley then came off and the bushings and washers were put back incorrectly the first time.

If things go smooth, this is a relatively easy job, especially if you can reach the power steering pivot bolt in back with small hands. If you run into problems, it begins to suck pretty quickly.

 

Es ture. But apparently a bolt was stuck...great OEM nuts and bolts that get corroded in the NE weather.

 

true about the weather..


i clean the underside of the car when i have it up for oil changes and such.. so mine is not corrided..

 

I've read through the process on the 60k Maintence page and in my haynes, but are there any other sites that talk about belts and belt deflection? I'd like to do my belts soon, but this will be my first time and I'm not all that familiar with the different tensioners and such.
-hype

 

I guess we learned something new today

 

It's all pretty self explanatory. Don't quote my but I think the power steering belt deflection is ~6MM and the AC/Alternator belt is ~3MM. Note your current deflection, an make it close to that.

Use two rulers to measure deflection; one lays flat between two pulleys and one to push in at the middle to measure.

The 60K Maitenance page explains most of the process very well. First loosen the bolts it say to then adjust the tensioners.

The tensioner on the AC/Alt. belt is incredibly easy to operate; loosen the bolt to loosen the belt, tighten the bolt to tighten the belt. You have to move the entire power steering pump with a bolt that you can only get to from under the car; tightening the bolt loosens the belt and loosening the bolt tightens the belt.

 

NE weather heheh well i thank the stars that I was in cali with my MAx heheh nice beautiful skys and no salt or snow so I guess it was easy for me hehe sorry bout the stnad up hope ya get over it he aint worth it OK erica

 

Man, we were all over my car taking those belts off.


If some of you fellas run into the problems I had, it will take you much longer than 20 minutes to do this job. The adjusting bolt for the idler pulley could have been destroyed from the corrosion and a couple of threads were out of place. I sprayed the hell out of it with WD40 and kept working it until I got the bolt off of the rod.


Now on to my next problem, leakage around my steering components.

 

ouch, hope it's not bad deezo.

and i played with mine so many times because, the first time i did it my power steering adjuster bolt broke, then i put them on again, one jumped a tooth, so i replacted that one and broke the idler pulley bolt then finally got them all on fine and then i took it off the car a couple months later to sell it.

 

You are aware that you had to loosen some nuts prior to loosening the belt tensioners. It is not hard at all seriously, you must be a big dude with big hands. But like someone posted above thats not hard check out the idler pulley on a V2 supercharger. Not cake at all.

 

I'm 6'5 and 240 pounds and my hands are pretty big. The biggest issue was the corrosion on the tensioner bolt (freakin nightmare).

 

The proper nuts were loosened, and yes it's not that hard normally. When you run into corrosion, it can be a big deal. We're lucky the bolt didn't snap and were able to work it free.

 

People are forgetting that I said we hit the corrosion deal in my posts.

 

I guess it's a foreign concept to them if they're not familiar with the Northeast.

 

Recently paid the dealer $100 to change the belts about a month ago. Just looking at what was involved the the corrosion on my 95, I was happy to fork over the cash. Same thing for exhaust mods... just take my money already!

 

that explains why you had such a hard time to get your hands way down there, next time get small little guy to get that for you. I use to that with my little brother.

 

My youngest brother is 7 and my other little brothers are just as big as I am. I guess I'll make iwannabmw my honorary Maxima.org little brother.

 

Sounds alright, but you'll have to beat the crap out of bigger people for me from time to time

 

 

My max has 115k and the belts have not been replaced yet..
I hope the dealers around here charge a max of $100 for the belts..

 

Umm, I think you should get them replaced..............

 

and the Midwest

 

 

took you long enough to respond...

 

Lots of work now a days.