moparam

Hi everyone...new here looking for help on replacing the serpentine belt tensioner on my son's 2008 tC. I've seen threads on pre 07 procedures but not found anything on 07 and up (I state 07 because from the post on doing this on older models I seen that others have stated that it is different on the 07-08 models. We're having to replace the tensioner as we found when we went to replace the water pump a previous owner or mechanic rounded off the nut cast into the assembly which is used to release belt tension so we had to cut the belt of(joy 2 other unexpected expenses.) I guess they got the new belt on and their solution to not having to mess with the tensioner again was to torque the heck out of the bolt that holds it to the block(I would think this just just be a pivot point so that you can release tension on the belt but after cutting the belt
and taking off the hydraulic 'shock' from the tensioner I expected it to flop around on this one bolt which I assumed was a pivot point but it wouldn't budge. I really didn't think it was coming loose but I finally got it to break free. I understand having to take out or loosen the 3 bolts on the passenger side motor mount to the chassis so that the motor can be jacked up and the bolt that holds the tensioner to the block can be removed but the problem I see is there are metal lines(ABS I assume) above the motor mount bolt nearest the firewall and a bracket of some type.
I don't see any way to get a socket with an extension on it to loosen or remove that bolt without damaging those metal lines.

What am I missing??? Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer on this.

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drizzoh

Have any pics? Tensionsers are usually pretty straight forward, just remove whatever is in the way and then usually 2-3 bolts holding it on. 2005-10 should be the same procedure for the most part, same motor. If you buy the replacement part, that should help you locate what needs to come off. Might have to use a box wrench or offset head wrench to get to a bolt if a socket won't, can try something with a U-joint as well.

moparam

drizzoh I'll try to take a photo of what exactly I'm talking about(I'm at work at the moment.) The issue is the one bolt that won't come out due to lack of room between the engine and the frame rail(unibody whatever you want to call it) that attaches the tensioner to the front of the engine(I've already got it broken free.) I've read about having to loosen/remove the bolts that hold the passenger side motor mount and jack up the engine on that side to get the bolt to a point that it clears the frame rail and as I mentioned the issue is the rear most engine mount bolt has stuff in the way preventing it's removal. I'll post photo(s) this weekend as I just received the replacement tensioner and am hoping to work on this some over the weekend. Thanks for your reply.

drizzoh

Oh okay, you said firewall and I was little confused. Sometimes when doing those tight bolts, it works with either a lot of extensions to pass annoying things or just holding the socket itself in your hand and just using that or only your fingertips to remove. There's gotta be a way to do it

moparam

drizzoh I ended up getting it all done and what a royal pain...the engineer who designed this should have to perform this task repeatedly (10,20,50,100 times) so that they can see what a ridiculous design this is. I was able to finally get to the rear motor mount bolt (had to nudge some of those hard lines over a bit to slip the socket and long extension past) and of course had to jack up the motor to get this bolt out and replace the tensioner. All I can say is I'm glad it's done and hopefully it won't need this done again before my son decides to trade it on something else. Thanks again.

09TcNick

Was that the only mount you had to get? I got an 09 and can’t seem to lift the engine high enough to actually get at that bolt. I haven’t even broke the tensioner bolt free yet and I’m kinda just hoping they shortened the thing to a normal length so I can get it with a wrench 🙄 I don’t see how to get to it. Tried going up down everything.