Gentlemen,

Does anyone know of a good write-up on replacing the serpentine belt on a 97 Discovery I? This will be my first time and I was hoping to find a straight forward write-up.

Also what size wrench is it to remove fan blade, I was planning on removing it and the shroud to clean some stuff up and have open access for changing the belt.

All help appreciated.

 

A write up no... There is plenty of room to get into remove the fan with a 12" or 15" adjustable cresent wrench. Use a pully holder or put a box end on one of the pulley bolts and bump the wrench a few times and as long as no one got stupid while putting on in the past, it should break loose. Put a socket or box end on the tensioner and pull/rotate it clock wise to release the tension. The belt can be changed with the fan in place just by removing the top of the shroud as well. BTW, Remove the tension from the belt and check the waterpump for play before you remove the fan.

 

http://www.roverparts.com/TechTips/s...g_defender.cfm

Make sure you put the belt back on the correct way, it is VERY easy to put is on wrong on a DI.
If you do put it on wrong you will never know it until your battery goes dead because it was not being charged because it was turning to slow.

 

Thanks to both of you for your input. It may sound like overkill to completely remove the shroud by pulling the fan off, but mine is so dirty, that I want to do to clean it good.

I did something yesterday that was standard practice on much of the machinery at one of the cotton mills where I worked maintainance for a few months in between aerrospace jobs. I took our air compressor with a blowgun tip on it and started blowing out some of the nooks and crannies under the hood. All sorts of dust and dried up leaves and stuff came up out of all sorts of places.

I blew out the radiator area, first from inside to outside, it looked like a Sahara Desert Windstorm. This went on for several minutes, switching from outside to in , inside to out across engine, everywhere I could stick the airhose. Even the front of the pulley mounts. Every damn crevice was incredibly nasty.

I ripped off the front airdam this morning and you would not believe the degree of corrsion in that area. One light reflector was 70% gone.....

I got so much to finish, I am pulling off everything that is not necessary, and cleaning everything, replacing what I have too. So Thanks again for the input. Guess I'll go buy a bigass cresent wrench tomorrow.

 

Yep. Been there!! Took me a long time to figure out what the problem was.

 

Great to know, I have started photo-documenting most of my pre-removal items to use for reference during re-assembly. At my age and all the stuff I've been through, the memory just ain't as sharp as it used to be.

 

Not much to document.

 

I went ahead and followed everyone's advaice. I left the main part of the shroud in place. Printed the page to make sure I got the routing correect.

The old one was severely cracked, got it off. Hit everthing with the shop air again, got it as clean as possible and routed the new belt. It was a little tricky, but I got my son out there to help me. I guided the new belt on the lower pulley from underneath the front end while he slipped it in place from the top. That worked well, trying it alone was not working out.

Glad to have tne new one on after seeing just how bad the old one was.