How do you put a fan belt on?

For reasons we don’t quite understand, all the fan belts driven by the crankshaft seem to be called “fan belts.” In actuality, of course, the one driving the cooling fan (attached to the water pump) is the fan belt and all others should be called whatever they are driving, but that’s the way things have evolved. We’ll just call them “belts.”

Older cars generally had only one fan belt that drove the fan, water pump and generator. Later on another fan belt was added to drive a power steering pump and soon afterward another came along to run the air conditioner compressor. Whatever your engine/accessory configuration, changing fan belts is an easy and relatively straightforward, if not a dirty task. We’re going to change the alternator and A/C fan belts on this Corvette engine, partly because it’s been chewing up A/C fan belts and partly because it is clean enough to photograph details.

Every engine-driven accessory has some sort of adjustment on its bracket attaching points. In the case of this Corvette the alternator’s adjusting fastener is right at the top. The A/C compressor is adjusted with a bolt that passes through a flat plate on its front flange.

To loosen the fan belts you need to undo the adjusting bolts and push the device in towards the center of the engine. This can generally be done without loosening any other mounting hardware, but if the accessory is too tight you might have to do so. Just remember to count how many fasteners have been loosened so you won’t forget to re-tighten them all.

This article comes from second edit released