Need help with 1986 Pontiac Parisienne, belt removal. Getting frustrated.

Is anyone around the boards here familiar with the 1986 Pontiac Parisienne?
A family member has one and today the water pump started pouring coolant. So, I volunteered to replace it....bad mistake (apparently)

I cannot seem to figure out how to get the belts off so that I can remove the water pump. It doesn't have the standard tensioner(s) that I am accustomed to and it seems without taking half the flippin' car apart there is no other way. Before I did that, I figured I would post this here and at the pontiac forums in hopes that someone, somewhere is familiar with this type of set up and knows how these frikkin' things come off.

Please help....thanks in advance (if anyone can help)

It is an 86 Parisienne...307, VIN type Y.

a reply to: Jakal26

on alot of older cars , just loosen bolts on alternator and slide the alternator to release tension. just a guess

a reply to: DEANORULES24

Dean is right, I know on my car the tensioner is the alternator itself, the alternator mounts on a bracket that is part of a track, this track actually has a gear nut on it and you adjust the tension by moving the alternator assembly.

Your other option is remove the pulley wheel itself. I know for the V-belt on a VW this is how we attack this problem. Remove the pulley's 4 bolts belt is free. Repeat process to reattach, just use an awl to line up the bolt holes, once one bolt is in.

a reply to: DEANORULES24

You are correct. I have removed the belt from the alternator, but there are two other belts. It kinda looks like I could do the same with the belt that goes around the pulley for the A/C...but even then, there is a third belt and I have no clue how to get it off, short of taking the pulleys loose completely...but then getting them back on is going to be tricky as hell.

I am hoping it is not the case, but am think that I am going to have to take a LOT of stuff apart to get them off...but again, even if I do that, getting them back on without releasing the tension (at least to some degree) is going to be, at the very least problematic, at worst..completely impossible.

Thanks for the response though.

Yes that's exactly how most of those old cars are, loosen it up and push it over with a pry bar to get the tension for the new belt.

a reply to: Jakal26

Is the third belt on the power steering? You should be able to loosen that as well. It got much easier when they went to a serpentine belt for most cars. Just loosen the idler and pop it off.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

The one from the alternator went from alternator to power steering.
The one from the a/c goes around a pulley in front of the water pump and the one in question that I can find no way to get off goes from that same pulley (dual pulleys) down to....somewhere..LOL. The terminology escapes me as I am a lowly carpenter and cars are not my specialty. I am guessing it is the drive belt?

There are brackets all over the place that are in front of the water pump as well, with bolts coming from the block outward..it appears I'm going to have to remove all of those because without doing so I can see no way whatsoever to get the water pump out. It has to come straight out towards the radiator because of those bolts.

This is becoming a pain
Why did I volunteer/get volunteered for this....lol

Thanks for the responses...

a reply to: rowdyrich

That's fine for the alternator belt and the one going from the a/c pump, but what about the third one in question?
Any guesses? Or am I about to embark in taking half this frikkin' car apart just to change a water pump? LOL

And to think, I thought it was a pain in the rear to change the water pump on my 89 F150...
Thought this one was going to be cake...didn't realize it didn't have the modern tensioner(s).....gggggrrrrr..

a reply to: Aeshma

Remove the pulley's 4 bolts belt is free. Repeat process to reattach, just use an awl to line up the bolt holes, once one bolt is in.

This was my next plan of action. Of course, even if I do that, there are a bunch of brackets that hold the alternator and the a/c pump in place that directly slide onto the same bolts as the water pump, in front of the water pump...so that means I'm going to have to remove all those as well?

Thanks for your response.

a reply to: Jakal26

Then the third could be the air pump.



I do agree that you will most likely need to remove all the brackets as the water pump is mounted directly to the block and often the bolts are through bolts used to mount other hardware, brackets and accessories.

You could try the Mercedes dealership technique, take a dull pry bar and put it under a strong accessible pulley in a way that it will bump it off when the starter is turned for a second, do the same to put it back on when you are done, no re-adjusting belts, bada-bing bada boom.

a reply to: Jakal26

i would not remove any pulley while the belt is still attached.
yeah you can line up holes and use an awl blah blah but it will be a major pain in the ass man.

would not do that.

someone said that sometimes you can loosen the alternator and then use a pry bar to release tension. thats true.
another possibility is there is a tensioner but you are not used to what it looks like. most people think of a tensioner of a pulley above/below the idler pulley that you can use a ratchet or tensioner tool on to release tension.
again that is true.

some of the older school cars had tensioners on them that did not look like that. easy to miss really.
it will look like a bracket or a small cluster of brackets(for lack of a better term). there will be a long ass bolt that you can adjust. not sure which way to crank but it wont look like anything is happening but tension will pull off.
when i say a long bolt i mean this thing might be 12 inches long. just pick a point on the belt and start following it. see each pulley and bracket and follow those. you will find it.

this is not going to be an exact match. this is from a metric car but same type of deal i am talking about.

it wont be that clean or that accessible though. shouldnt be bad either.
it probably looks something like that.
the bolt is probably more vertical

or you could just do it like this

a reply to: TinySickTears

The alternator pulley was very similar (the bolt you are talking about and that is in the pic you provided)...I got that one off, no problem. Just loosened a few things and moved the alternator down. It's on some kind of rocker arm type set up.

The a/c pump one looks quite similar but the bolt is not there and there are a few more things that have to be loosened for it to move down so that belt can come off....you're also correct that the bolt is more vertical than in this picture.

It's the third one that's got me....

(I think I'll pass on the video attempt though. That just looks like an accident waiting to happen...lol But thanks for the vid...never know when I might need to one in a pinch. It's something similar to what I've done with riding mower belts in the past..also an accident waiting to happen...and has happened...lol...ouch, my fingers hurt just thinking about past endeavors using that technique)

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

That's what I figured...
Sounds like tomorrow morning is going to be....umm, "fun".

Don't know if you've already started on your project or not. But if your belt routing looks anything like this:


Then as AugustusMasonicus indicated, it looks like the air pump can be loosened up to get that belt off just like the AC and Alternator.
If not, then maybe this will give you some idea of what to look at.

Some other links that may or may not relate to that vehicle's engine:
Link1
Link2
Link3
Link4
Link5

Hope this helps. I don't do much work on vehicles. But I was curious so I did a little research.

-dex

a reply to: DexterRiley

Well posted Dex

originally posted by: Jakal26
Is anyone around the boards here familiar with the 1986 Pontiac Parisienne?
A family member has one and today the water pump started pouring coolant. So, I volunteered to replace it....bad mistake (apparently)

I cannot seem to figure out how to get the belts off so that I can remove the water pump. It doesn't have the standard tensioner(s) that I am accustomed to and it seems without taking half the flippin' car apart there is no other way. Before I did that, I figured I would post this here and at the pontiac forums in hopes that someone, somewhere is familiar with this type of set up and knows how these frikkin' things come off.

Please help....thanks in advance (if anyone can help)

It is an 86 Parisienne...307, VIN type Y.

www.2carpros.com... page shows tensioners for various motors on the Parisienne...Hope this helps...

a reply to: Jakal26Start from the belt closest to the fan blade. Remove them in sequence from front to back. Every belt on that engine has some sort of way to adjust tension. Just loosen the bolts and slide the AC Compressor, Alternator, Power Steering Pump, smog pump until the belts become slack. Removing pulley's is not necessary.