AUX belts and pulleys - fitting advice?

[doodles]

Hello all,

Newbie here!

I've got the dreaded whining under the bonnet of my 182, which is on 54K now, and from what I can see from my servicing records, the belt has been changed but not the pulleys. I think the tensioner bearing has gone as there is a fair bit of heat and a funny smell coming from the area of that. Belt stays cool, though, so I don't think it's seized yet (thank heavens!) Managed to get hold of all the bits (belt, tensioner and guide pully) cheap on ebay (genuine Renualt, the lot for £87 plus shipping - Renault quoted me £243 inc VAT!!) but I'm running short on dough at the moment so I will have to try this myself - from what I can see that's almost 3 hours of garage labour and that ain't gonna be cheap! From what I have read and from the "exploratory surgery" I did at the weekend, looks like a nasty job and definitely will mean skinning knuckles.

I have the dialogys document for the F4R738 engine and it recommends removing the bumper, driver's headlamp, the plastic underarch from the wheel well and the insulating material. Even with all this out, I still have to get spanners in down the side to remove the tensioner - looks physically impossible to me! So I was wondering if anyone's actually managed to get this done without filling a swearbox! Any tips would be very welcome!

Cheers

Mark

[MATT BLACK]

My advice is dont use the car till the kits fitted

Change the cam belt / tensioners / aux belt and alt belt tensioner. If any of the pulleys break / collapse the consequences are fatal. Also the aux belt has a tendancy to snap and then fly off into the path of the cam belt - again causing ££££ in damage.

You want a data sheet on timing these up ??

[MATT BLACK]

[Tom]

Looks like a nightmare, is this engine out?

[MATT BLACK]

[MATT BLACK]

Looks like a nightmare, is this engine out?

No - bumper off / wheel off and rads off will make life easier - if you dont get it right though ..........:-( can be nasty

[doodles]

Cheers Matt I will give that a go. Is it easy to get the tools down the side of the engine to take off the tensioner pulley, or do you need special tools? I have a good socket set and a large torque wrench, spanners aplenty as well.

[doodles]

Matt sorry I forgot to add, yes please I will have that data sheet on timing the engine up, many thanks.

[Fred@BTM]

have you got the camshaft/crankshaft locking tools?

[doodles]

Hi Fred

No I don't have them, and I don't suppose they're easy to come by, I bet?

[Mike@Rentech]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RENAULT-16V-DO...QQcmdZViewItem

or you can get it from your local dealer.

[doodles]

Thanks Mike - I was originally only going to do the AUX belt and pullys, but seeing as how much you have to strip away, I may as well do the timing belt as well whilst everything's apart. Am I right in thinking that you have to suspend the engine with a special tool and take off the upper engine mount that sits over the top of the cam gears to do this? Looks that way on the dialogys CD's that I've got for the F4R motor. But just like good old Haynes manuals, I'd always rather ask people that have tried it themselves as it's always easy to say "take off bolt A and remove part B" on paper - when you've got bugger all room to work on and the wrong tools to do it with, that's what matters! I'm not afraid of any mechanical job on any car, just as long as I know it's possible to do and I have the tools at hand to do it.

Cheers again for all the tips and advice.