How to Replace AC Belt and Tensioner 2000-08 Chevy Tahoe

You remove this cover. There's a bolt right here. Use an 8-millimeter socket. Take that out. And slide the cover up and slide it forward. There's a bracket right here that holds the coolant hoses on. Just use a trim tool and just separate that from that. This one's broken in this vehicle. Now we wanna remove the snorkel and use an 8-millimeter socket, loosen up the worm clamp or you can use a straight blade screwdriver. So right here. Slide this off. And slide it off the throttle body. And pull it out of your way.

And use a 15-millimeter wrench or you can use a belt tensioner tool and just put it on the belt tensioner, loosen this up. Slide the belt off of the idler pulley. Loosen up on the tensioner and slide the belt off the alternator, off the power steering pump pulley, off the water pump, and off the crank pulley. Now your vehicle may have a shield right here. There should be two bolts down below and then two or three bolts up top. They're 15 millimeters. Use a 15-millimeter socket, take that shield down. I'm gonna take a ratchet with a 3/8 extension and slide it right into there of the tensioner. Loosen up the tension on the belt. Then slide the belt behind the crank pulley just like that. Then take the ratchet off. You can slide the belt over the AC compressor and slide it off the crank pulley. And there's two bolts on the AC tensioner. Use a 15-millimeter socket, remove those 2 bolts. All right. Take those bolts out. And just grab the tensioner and slide it out. Take the new tensioner and put it in position. Take the bolts. Get them started. And now I can torque those bolts to 37 foot-pounds.

Take the belt. You can go over the crank pulley and then go behind it. And then slide it over the AC compressor. Get that lined up. And then try to get the belt over the top part of the crank pulley. And make sure it's over the tensioner. And you can try this this way or the opposite way. You could have the belt on this side. Then we'll take the ratchet. As you pull a little bit of tension on the belt, then move the tensioner down and just walk the belt onto the pulley. Oops, slipped off. Can try to slip it over the tensioner like this as well. It's not as easy. Oops. And slip it over. And just make sure the belt is all the way around the pulleys and the AC pulley. And that looks good. And if your vehicle had a shield right here, you wanna replace that shield at this time.

All right. Take the serpentine belt and slide it over the crank pulley first and go over the water pump. The back side of the belt needs to go over the water pump. And go down to the power steering pump and up over the alternator. And then over the tensioner right here. And you hold off on putting it over the idler pulley till last. And now take your belt tensioner tool or a wrench and just take the tension off the tensioner. All right. Now I'm gonna slide the belt close to the idler pulley and take the tension off the tensioner with your wrench or your belt tension tool. Just be careful. And take the wrench off and just double-check all the pulleys. And it looks good. Now take the intake snorkel and line this up with the throttle body. And that's good there. And line it up on the mass airflow sensor just like that. And tighten this up. Tighten up that worm clamp and then same with this one. And take this bracket and then reposition that into that bracket. This one's broken. And slide this cover back on. Get this bolt started. And tighten that up.