How to Replace Serpentine Belt 1998-2005 Volkswagen Passat

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In this video, we're going to show how to the alternator and power steering serpentine belts on this 2003 Volkswagen Passat wagon. This has the 1.8 liter turbo motor. It is a little involved so you do need to get some of the stuff from underneath the car so you will need a jack and jack stands as well as a 17mm wrench, a 6mm Allen wrench, 17mm socket with a low profile flexible bar or breaker bar and a flat blade screwdriver.

To start, you actually have to remove the lower belt that controls the air conditioning compressor. You'll need to raise up your vehicle enough so you can get under the front end and get to the belt and tensioner. This belt is easiest to see from up underneath the car. Come right up under here and you can see here's you're A/C compressor and here's the belt. This is the tensioner right here and up above is the crank pulley. Your tensioner is held on by two bolts. Let's see. There's one here and then I can't really see it but it's not this. This is actually what you grab onto with a 17mm wrench to tighten the tensioner. Right in behind, you'll feel another bolt just like this one and they're 6mm Allen bolts. Here's my 6mm Allen wrench, and if you have a longer one that's probably the best thing. I put that on there, and then I take a wrench and hook it on there for some extra leverage and loosen this bolt a couple of turns. Now I'm going to put it up on my bolt up here. There's not a really good way to film this. I'm just going to speed it up here. Like I said, there's no good way to film it. You just get your Allen wrench on there and use the other wrench for some leverage and loosen up the bolt up top, just a couple of turns to loosen up the tensioner. It loosened a little bit. You can see, I can push that tensioner up. That will come off the A/C pulley here and up and off your crank pulley up on the top there.

The tensioner for your alternator belt is right up here. Use a 17mm wrench, put it on there and pull on the tensioner and slip the belt off and let the tensioner back. Now you want to reach up in and it's pretty much easier to just remove the belt from the bottom.

We're looking up at the bottom here. To put the new belt in, what you want to do is make a loop and put it between the power steering pump and . you can actually put it on the power steering pump first then push a loop right up towards the top, just feed it right up and then take that and twist it and bring it around your crank pulley towards the center of the car. Then get it in and on the crank pulley. You're on the crank pulley and you're underneath the power steering pulley. Come up from above and reach down. Make sure it's on the power steering pulley really well and I'm going to reach over here, I'm going to grab it here and bring it in front of my tensioner and I'm going to do that by grabbing hold of it, pull it up and I'm going to twist on the belt counterclockwise a little bit and that allows it to come through. Get it through and basically twist it back, reaching down. I need to get it between the tensioner and my fan pulley, sorry about my back of my arm here, but this string is coming up right between my fan pulley and my tensioner pulley and I have to get this one over into the same spot. Reach down in there. This is probably the most difficult part. Push the belt underneath my pulley and now you can see it's on the crank directly. Make sure the belt's on here and then I'm going to reach up and over here, reach up here and reaching up further in with my hand and flip the belt underneath that tensioner.

I went underneath just to flip the alternator belt back up onto the crank pulley and now while I'm down here I'm just going to finish up and reinstall the lower belt before I finish off the upper belt. To reinstall the belt, they really don't make it easy here, you push it up in and reach up in and pull it onto the crank pulley first. You have to twist the belt around, pull it up in there. Get it up and on. Then work it around and onto the A/C compressor. Make sure it's on the A/C compressor, reach up make sure it's in the grooves on the crank pulley and then pull it down and onto your tensioner pulley here. Now I'm going to take a 17mm socket and a flex bar and I'm going to put that up on the tensioner where there's a bolt shape protrusion. Then you can see, I push on this and that tightens up my belt, I'm actually going to go up here, get my Allen wrench into the Allen bolt. I'm going to narrate this for you, you've got your Allen wrench that goes into the Allen bolt that tightens and mounts the tensioner so you want to get that a little bit on the tight side then grab that handle that's hooked onto that 17mm bolt and you apply force to that which tightens up the belt and then tighten up that Allen wrench as best you can. Then take the handle off and tighten up the Allen wrench the rest of the way and then tighten up the other Allen and mounting bolt that's lower down.

Now you can see my belt's sticking right up through there, I'm going to grab onto my tensioner, my 17mm, pull it loose and pull the belt right up onto the alternator, let the tensioner loose. I can see down my belt actually came off of my power steering pump, reach down there, put it back on there. Let it tighten up. Just look down in. I see that it's on my crank correctly. It's on the power steering pump correctly and it looks like it's a little off here. Push it onto the fan pulley just a little bit more and it's all set.

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