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I am looking at replacing the belt on my 96, non efi Bonneville. Last eyar when I replac4ed the AC Compressor I could not figure out a way to get the belt off short of jacking the engine up and removing the passenger (front ? ) side motor mount. I don't see anything in the service manual about ths, but do you in fact have to removed the motor mount or is there something I am missing?

Or is there a magic trick to this?

Thanks

you need to take out the bolt in the TAM (torque axis mount). Its not a 5 minute job like the 00+ crowd.

OK I thought so.

I hope none of you are an engineer, but WHAT WERE THEY THINKING with this design???

Holly Mackerel! What a mess that was.

Again I say, What were you smoking Engineers?????



(If you are one please pay no mind to my rants....I am making all my cuts feel better by mouthing off )

I don't know what brand of belt you went with, but I'll only use Goodyear Gatorback belts. The stock belts always cracked all over within a year for me. They'll still work okay, but I don't trust `em, so I go with the GoodYear. -Available at Autozone, but not Pep Boys.

Yeah, that torque axis mount is a pain. My wife's 2001 Grand Prix GT with the same engine as mine: I can change out the belt in about 60 seconds.

-Mark

I don't know if you '96 Bonnie is set up like my '95 88 but here is what I found when replacing the belt on my rig. I to was prepared to pull the motor mount to replace the belt. What I found was one of the lower motor mount mounting bolts had a spacer in it. I removed the bolt and spacer and was able to snake the belt thru the space left by the spacer. Whole job took about 15 minutes and no jack required!!!

57lxi wrote:I don't know if you '96 Bonnie is set up like my '95 88 but here is what I found when replacing the belt on my rig. I to was prepared to pull the motor mount to replace the belt. What I found was one of the lower motor mount mounting bolts had a spacer in it. I removed the bolt and spacer and was able to snake the belt thru the space left by the spacer. Whole job took about 15 minutes and no jack required!!!

Yeah...What 57lxi said...It is really easy...A nice write-up is lost on the other board...Takes a torx socket , spacer drops out, belt replacement is a snap!

Yeah I see it now, but my spacer didn't just drop out. Not sure how easy it is to get to the nut/torx bolt for that space with out the mount of of the way. I guess I'll find out next time. Still A very poor design as far as I am concerned.

Thanks for all the inputs and letting me rant on my "learnin" experience. :tard: