How to Check & Adjust Drive Belts

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m William Myers from Austin Subaru for Expert Village. Okay we’re going to talk about drive belts, now that you know where the components are these components are driven by a belt. So when you turn your AC on there’s a belt that’s driving the AC compressor, when you turn the stirring wheel and you have that nice that easy feel of turning the stirring wheel when you’re parallel parking your car that’s the power stirring pump doing its job. Your alternator is keeping the battery charged, the lights on and the engine running. So I want to show you where the belts are, what they look like, how to adjust them and how to tell a bad belt from a good belt. As you can see these are your drive belts, this is the AC drive belt it drives the AC compressor, this is the alternator drive belt it drives the alternator, if you look down here you can see this is where the adjustment is on that AC compressor belt, if you look right here this is the top adjusting bolt for adjusting the alternator either up or down to tighten or loosen the belt. There’s a bolt down here that locks the alternator in place and this bolt is the pivot bolt for the alternator. So if you’re going to let’s say remove your alternator belt you’d have to remove these covers, loosen this bolt, loosen this bolt that’s underneath this cover and adjust this bolt to either lower the alternator or raise the alternator, if you’re belt was too loose you’ll pull up on the alternator, if the belt was too tight you’ll go down on the alternator. That’s your alternator and drive belts."