Vehicles

saab - serpentine tensioner and tool box

Twice the serpatine belt had fallen off while I was driving the saab. This happened as I was just accelerating from a stop. The first time I was only 1 block from home so I drove it the rest of the way then reset the belt. The second time I was in a parking lot about 30 minutes from home so I had to do the repair on the spot. I started to loosen the wheel lug nuts when my wrench bent. Now, I dont tighten my lug nuts with pneumatic tools just to prevent this very issue. Now, the aftermarket lug nut wrench I bought because the saab didnt have one when I bought it broke. I loosened just one lug nut before the wrench became worthloss.

Now I was really frustrated because:

1. The belt fell off, again!
2. I dont have a way to remove a tire because my wrench sucks.

Long story short, I got Atasha to bring me the tools I needed to fix the saab so I was able to drive it home. Once there, I priced out a new serpentine belt tensioner. It was a little pricey so I decided to pull the one on the parts car. It may have up to 200k miles on it, but it works.

Once I got done with that swap, I got to thinking, maybe the parts saab has a factory toolkit with some tools in it unlike my dailer driver which only had a broken screw driver in the toolkit when I bought the car. Yay, it did have a full tool kit, including some swanky orange plumbers wrench.

At least of the new tensioner fails, I will be ready.

Serpentine

Pictures

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toolkit from parts saab
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tensioner from parts saab, dont know how many miles are on it
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tensioner removed, leave the mounting base alone
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all the parts of the tensioner
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there are bearings in that middle hole, they look pretty good
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bad tensioner from daily driver, bearings are SHOT
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bolt snapped in half on old tensioner, had to pry it apart to get wheel out and belt off wheel

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