Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

This is my first DIY so constructive criticism is always appreciated. After much searching online and failing, I thought I’ll write up how to change an RB25DET accessory belts. That is the Air-Con, Power-steering and Alternator belts. If this DIY already exists, all good here is another one.

Disclaimer: I am not a mechanic, I try and work things out using my own knowledge and other peoples DIY to please don’t blame me if anything goes wrong.

Belts I used:
Alternator: Gates Micro-VAT 4PK850
Air-Con: Gates Micro-VAT 4PH915
Power Steering: Gates Micro-VAT 3PK835

Meaning of the numbers:

4: Belt has 4 grooves, this cannot change in the replacement belt
PK: Not sure, don’t think its important
850: Length of belt, you need roughly the same.
All pulley systems have lots of room for adjustment for size of belt so you don’t have to have the exact same one. Have a look at what is currently installed and get something similar in size.

LET THE DIY BEGIN!

Firstly, you need to figure out which belt/s are worn. For me, when I had the steering at full lock with a cold engine, I would get belt squeal as well as when I turned the Air-Con. Therefore I decided to change those, as well as the alternator while I was at it.

When you open the engine bay, you will see your belts such as the pics below.

5_zpsy2qn5xnv.jpg

The the second step is to loosen the alternator pulley which is found on the left side of the engine bay, when facing the car. This will be done by loosening the bolt numbered 1 and then turning bolt number 2. You can then push the alternator towards the engine and loosen it.

2_zpswzcjoiqs.jpg

The next step is the removal of the fan. Using a 10mm spanner, undo the 4 bolts. It helps using WD-40 and then holding a pulley while applying force onto it. Once they are undone, remove the fan.

Once the fan is removed, you need to remove the belt at the very front first. This is the power steering. I believe. To remove this, loosen bolt 3 and then turn bolt 4 to bring the nut away from the holding plate. You can then push the pulley system and loosen the belt. Once loose, the belt can be slid off.

3_zps9ojrbzo8.jpg

The next step is the air-con belt. To remove this, you need to get under the car and remove the underbody protector by removing the 6 screws. Once removed, you will see another bolt near the middle of the car which needs to be loosened. This will allow the tensioner to move and loosen that belt. With the bolt loose, push the tensioner. This might be really tight so use WD-40 and/or a hammer on the block circled, NOT THE PULLEY ITSELF, to move it up. Once this has moved enough, you can pull that belt off too.

4_zpsqonvyfxu.jpg

The last belt to be removed will be the alternator belt. Since you have already loosen it, you can just slide that off too.

Once your belts are off, you can just need to reverse the process and put them back on.

20150928_170135_HDR_zpsaguonbdv.jpg

First alternator belt, don’t tighten this. Next the Air-con belt. Tighten aircon belt tension bolt enough so that belt twists to 90 degrees and nothing more, don’t re-install the under-body protector yet. Install power steering belt and again tighten it so you can just twist it to 90 degrees and tighten the other holding bolt. Next re-install the fan. Once the fan is tight, you can tighten the alternator belt to the same tension.

Start up the car and listen for any noises. Any screeches means the belt it too loose. Power steering will screech at full lock so hold it at full lock for a few seconds. Air-con should screech as soon as you start it if it is loose. Alternator should screech at any point when the car is on.

If any screeches are heard, tighten the corresponding belt using bolts 2, 4 or 5.

Once all belts are tight, you can reinstall the underbody protection as we left it off in case we need to tighten the air-con belt.

Go for a drive and test it out. If any screeching is heard, tighten the belt which causes. Avoid belt squeal eliminators as they are only temporary fixes which make more of a mess than solve the problem.

Final Step: Enjoy your screech-less belts and pulleys :action-smiley-069:!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/460031-rb25det-belts-change/
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Nice write up - I looked for a guide ages ago when I did mine and couldn't find any so I just thought stuff it and ended up working it out. A guide would have been nice back then :)

Part of the reason I wrote one up. I thought someone somewhere would find it useful.

  • 1 month later...

Hey man, to tighten the alternator belt do I loosen bolt 1 and adjust tightness with bolt 2? Which way am I suppose to be turning bolt 2 to tighten?

Hey,

Sorry for late reply, I was overseas. Yeah you need to loosen bolt 1 so that the whole alternator moves then turn bolt 2. You want the whole alternator moving away from the middle of the engine so from memory and looking at the picture, it should be to the left to tighten, therefore towards the cabin of the car. It moves enough with each turn to be able to see if its tightening or loosening.

  • Like 1

Hey,

Sorry for late reply, I was overseas. Yeah you need to loosen bolt 1 so that the whole alternator moves then turn bolt 2. You want the whole alternator moving away from the middle of the engine so from memory and looking at the picture, it should be to the left to tighten, therefore towards the cabin of the car. It moves enough with each turn to be able to see if its tightening or loosening.

Thanks mate, yeah took me a while to figure out, was turning both bolts like a mad man and nothing was happening. Had to remove my FMIC piping to get a better view and realised bolt 2 moves the alternator in the slot.

  • 1 year later...
  • 4 years later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/20/2021 at 6:01 AM, Malar1898 said:

This Guide misses a second Bolt at the Powersteering Pump that needs to be loosened to relax or tension the Belt there.

Its the Bolt fixating the Pump and Adjuster-Screw below the #3 shown here.

Thanks for that! I missed that step

  • 1 month later...

Yo man, been reading your living with an R33 thread, big ups on that!


Wanted to ask a question on this thread - my A/C belt only started making a belt slipping noise when the A/C is turned on. The belt is rotating fine when the A/C is off no squeal, does this lead anyone to believe its the bearing for any reason? or could it be the condenser itself having an issue?

  • 3 years later...
4 hours ago, silviaz said:

Does anyone find that they have to tighten their alternator belt once in a while? Mine started squealing again.

Once the belt slips it can very easily cause a cascade that encourages more belt slip. Check the pulleys carefully and see if the grooves have cupped. If it has it's time to replace the pulleys. If the rubber has glazed you also need to replace it. Shouldn't be shiny. From the factory there's a lot of exposed fibers(?) on a v-belt that will go away as it's broken in but some should still remain visible without sticking out significantly like a new belt.

I went through this on my dad's Camry recently. It would keep slipping even after setting the tension higher, only solution was a new belt.

  • Thanks 1
13 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

You can also get belt dressing in a spray can which can help to settle a belt in that otherwise wants to slip.

Did that last time and it was squealing like mad lol. But my belt was loose at the time. I'll check the tension tomorrow, think I checked it a couple of months ago and was fine.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Yeah, but the narrowband is truly narrowband. So you take it out of the linear zone and it is effectively nonsense. And that linear zone is so literally narrow, that nonsense is not very far away. Unless they are flicking back and forth across the stoich point, for real, under actual control, they can't be trusted for anything except entertainment value.
    • I agree, and yet my "HRM " hat is also on, as his wideband is in disagreement with the narrowband where they used to play closer attention to each other.
    • That's the thing. Especially at idle, changing the cam angle by that much could be spewing more fuel out the exhaust courtesy of everything happening that bit later. More fuel also means more air (if the fuel didn't burn, then neither did the O2) and so the O2 sensors can start to tell interesting but misleading stories. And the specifics of what is happening could easily be affected by everything else you changed as well. And it could be dynamic, where a few revs more or less could somewhat change how the engine is breathing.
    • Good idea on the temp probe. The mv readings of the O2 sensors are very similar to one another, as is the injector pw. I went through logs in the past to see if there was a discrepancy and there is. Because they alternate up and down as narrowbands do.. they do often 'switch' as to which one is more. They were never 20%+ (more like 1-2%) so it's possible the difference between 20 and 15-17% is a similar discrepancy to 2.0% and 1.7% which I wouldn't have really noticed in the past. We did think about spacing the strut brace. Unfortunately the ~20mm that the GTR brace is lower than the GTT brace is effectively what you need to clear the vents. Moving it up would make it very uncomfortable, but it's plausible that 10mm is a unhappy medium between both hard places... The good news is.. using MR HAMMER it was actually pretty easy to bend back the bent bits to make sure the guard and headlight/new headlight tabs line up right. Yes, we used a R34 GTR guard to make sure the bolt holes all lined up with a known straight guard. As above, you can see the side skirt and the GTR guard are not meant to play together, but everyone seems to think this is a simple fix to the point where nobody who has had these talk to one another mentions how... ...so I'll just assume they know how to fix it when it comes to paint jail time again. Whoever they are. Nobody returns my calls. There's so much changed with regard to the ECU and the car.. that the next step really is to connect the scanner and attempt to drive the thing. It'll be pretty clear pretty fast how in or out everything actually is...
    • That's nasty! I think there is perhaps an inherent problem is using elastomers in such environments. The whole thing can and will get quite hot, and elastomers are not famous for their temperature resistance. On top of that, if the components are cast rubber or urethane and so on, there might be QA/QC problems with bubbles or voids in the material that could critically change their performance. They might just tear apart after being squished (presuming that any elastomers are used in compression rather than tension, I'm thinking that you squeeze one with a void in it and it tears the wall of the void to the outer edge of block, then the next time it extends or otherwise twists, it just gives up). This is all purely hypothetical, but it makes me wonder if the things that they have put into it to make it nice to use/live with are perhaps going to cause occasional failures like this. I wouldn't be getting up in arms over it, unless there are many repeats. I have personally ruined an Xtreme clutch - just an HD thing. I can't remember if it was still behind the 20 or was after the 25 went in. But it inverted some of the retaining spring/clip things around the outside. No-one could explain it. It wasn't thrashed, there wasn't heaps of torque being put through it, and there were no obvious problems other than the above. They were quite concerned by the event so they replaced it even though it was a few years old, which was very nice of them. As far as I am concerned, these things happen with clutches.
×
×
  • Create New...