I'm in the midst of diagnosing another issue on my 1981 240 with K Jet, today I noticed that one of my belts was twisted and another was delaminating.....this has happened in the last few months, I had the car in for some work a few months back and they said "the belts were loose, we tightened them"....I think they over tightened as now I have issues.



So I have belts on the way and managed to untwist one so I can drive around town.



I found the nut for loosening the alternator, and I can see where I can loosen the upper part of the power steering pump....but how/where does one loosen the two pulleys that run from the engine pulley to the lower pulley on the steering pump? I couldn't see a place where either loosened and my Haynes manual is waaay too vague on this topic. Any thoughts would be great!
thanks,
Mark

 

make sure the alternator pulley is parallel to the crank pulley... the alternator pivots on some rubber bushings, they wear out, then the alternator has slop and sits at an angle, this eats your belts much faster.

different redblocks have the belt driven accessories juggled around in different positions, so its hard to say how things are adjusted without seeing your specific layout. I think on our 87, the power steering ran off the air conditioner pulley, but I realize an 81 is far less likely to have AC than a 87...

 

This car did have AC! No longer working of course.

 

One thought is, if the AC doesn't work anyway, do I even need the AC belt? Would this harm anything? I could just cut the sucker off.

 

Actually I think I do need the AC belt, the PS belt is routed to the AC too, so if I remove the belt from the system the PS won't be powered.

So I gotta figure out how to loosen the AC, which would be the early York one.

 

On the 87 and later cars, the A/C is mounted nearly the same as the alternator, on a bracket with a pair of rubber bushing pivots, and a tensioner screw. when you tension it, its tensioning both the A/C to crank belt, and the PS to AC belt.

 

Hmm, I don't think this one is mounted the same. I can see where the PS is setup like this, but its directly vertical to the AC which needs some way of tensioning the belt to the engine pulley.

 

Thanks to the internet I think I've uncovered the answer here.
Apparently in vehicles with the York AC compressor there is no way of adjusting the tension via the AC, its bolted directly to the engine.

The tension is supplied by shims under the outter crankshaft pulley, held on by small nuts. So these are removed, the belt comes off, etc.

This weekend I'll be tackling this so I'll update, but wanted to post this info to help out future folks.