How to Replace Serpentine Drive Belt 2001-07 Toyota Highlander L4 2-4L

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

To open the hood, we have to pull the release from inside of the car. It's just inside, right around your left knee on the driver's side. You need to release the secondary or safety release. Just kind of feel around for it. This one is right here. Squeeze up. The alternator is located here, in front of the engine, right on the top.

You need to remove the belt from the pulley. I'm going to use a serpentine belt tool to loosen the tensioner. It's not spring loaded. It's got a shock on it. There's a 19 millimeter, like welded on, or it's a nut part, a hex drive that's part of the tensioner. When you pull down on this, you basically just have to slowly compress it. It's like a shock that you can see. So you don't pull really fast and hard, because you'll break the tab off on the tensioner. You just sort of pull gently and slowly, and you'll feel it compress, and the belt will get looser. See how the belts getting loose, and then you pull it off the pulley.

If you don't have access to a serpentine belt tool, take this out of here. You can use a breaker bar with a 19 millimeter socket. I'm using a 12-point to give me a little bit more range. Or you can use a large ratchet so you can have more movement. It's going to be a little bit trickier to get down here, so I want to feed the breaker bar and the socket down in there. You've got a bracket here, and there's this brake line that comes out, and you just have to kind of be careful not to bend them too much. You're going to do the same exact thing, just reach in here gently, and pull it, and it will compress.

I’ve got to push this out of the way a little bit. So you're pulling the front of the engine. I'm going to carefully put a pipe over the end of this wrench over the end of this breaker bar to give me some more leverage. And then just gently pull down and compress the tensioner. See the belt releasing? I think that's as far as it's going to go. Reach down and lock it right off the pulley. Release the tensioner. Now you can remove the breaker bar from the tensioner, and feed the belt off the rest of the pulleys.

Here's the old belt from the vehicle. It does have some wear on it. It's not in too terrible of shape. Here's a brand new belt from 1A Auto.com. Same exact style. Same amount of ribs. It's tough to tell, but it is the same length. Because this belt is brand new, it's been folded up in the package. Eventually it will be nice and round like this one. This one will fit great and work great in your vehicle.

Drive belt goes around the power steering pulley, up and around the alternator pulley, around the water pump, down around the AC compressor pulley, around the crank, and then up over the tensioner pulley.

Put the belt line up on the pulleys. Put out bar back on here, and then gently compress the tensioner again. It feels like it's bottom out, so I pull tight on the belt. Slide it onto the alternator pulley. Pull the pipe off. Release the tensioner slowly to let the tension come back. It won't spring back because it's like a shock—it comes out a little slower, and then the belt is on there perfectly.

Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.