This Is Rubbish!

WARNING! I am by no means a professional mechanic. Quite the opposite, in fact. This guide is provided as just that – a guide, and only a guide. This guide is not intended to be taken as professional advice, instruction, or as a factual tutorial. It expresses merely the single experience of me, the author. I do not guarantee or even imply that your experience will be exactly as described in this article. Work on your own car at your own risk. And please, if you do not feel comfortable with any of the procedures described in this article, take your car to a professional, experienced automotive technician who is familiar with your model of car, and has done this work before. If you do choose to perform your own work or repairs, please be careful, double-check everything, and don’t yell at me if your car bursts into flames, calls you vulgar names, and steals your wife.

Be prepared!

You will need:

• Sturdy jackstands and a floor jack, or sturdy ramps. If your alternator belt has snapped, I would recommend a jack and jackstands, as pushing your immobile 944 up onto ramps is not going to be a fun thing to do.
• A new alternator belt. Consult 944online.com or Autozone for the proper part. You will need a different one depending on whether or not your 944 has Air Conditioning.
• A set of Metric wrenches and sockets. The largest being 17mm. You should have each size smaller as well.
• A 17mm socket with a breaker bar. I did not have this, and had to use a 8″ long wrench. The bolts were seized up pretty good, and it would have been a lot easier to get them off if I had a breaker bar. Don’t use a ratchet to try to free seized bolts. You WILL break it. Ask me how I know.
• A can of WD-40. Saturate the bolts and turnbuckles in WD-40 before trying to remove them. This will help loosen them, and help keep them from seizing the next time you have to do this. Avoid getting WD-40 on any of the belt rollers. This is not good for the belts.
• While you’re in there: A replacement power steering belt. You’ll have to take this off to remove the old alternator belt anyway, so why not replace it now? No extra work, just a good idea.
• Orange grease soap/gritty soap/whatever other mechanic’s soap you prefer. You will need this. You are about to get very greasy. Oh, believe me, you will be greasy.
• Clothes you don’t mind being black by the time you’re done.
• Patience – this is not a hard job, but it can be time consuming, especially if you have stuck bolts. Don’t expect to be finished in 10 minutes. I would allow at least two hours for this job, if you have never done it before. That’s about how long it took me to do, and I had never done it before. Next time it will go a lot faster, as I WD-40′d all the bolts and stuff, and I won’t be spending a full hour trying to get them loose next time.

Let’s get to it!

Here is a diagram of what the underside of the car will look like:

Click for full view

1. Jack up your 944 on the driver’s side from the jack point high enough so you can fit comfortably under the front of the car. The jack point is under the door, in the middle, marked by a little divot in the rocker panel. Make sure you get the jack on the jack point, or you’ll be removing it from the floor of your car. No bueno.
2. Get a jack stand under the frame as close to the engine as you can, on the driver side. Slowly let the jack down so the car rests securely on the jack stand. You definitely don’t want the car falling on your face. Blood on the underside of your car may hurt the resale value.
3. Get under the front and remove the bolts holding on the skid plate. You can remove the whole thing if you want, I chose to just remove the front bolts and let it droop down. I had plenty of room to work. Put your bolts somewhere safe, because losing bolts sucks.
4. Now that you can see the belts, it’s time to locate your two new best friends: the power steering pump turnbuckle and the A/C compressor turnbuckle. If you don’t know what a turnbuckle is, you should probably take your car to a shop to have this done..  Your mileage may vary, but on my car, the PS turnbuckle loosens in the direction of reverse turning wheels, and the A/C turnbuckle loosens in the opposite direction.
5. You will now need to loosen the PS turnbuckle enough to remove the PS belt. The PS belt needs to come off because it is blocking the Alt/AC belt from coming off. Once you have the PS belt off, loosen the AC turnbuckle until you can remove the Alt/AC belt. You may need to loosen it more than this for the new belt, depending on how worn the old one was.
6. Put on the new Alt/AC belt, and then put back the PS belt, or put on your new PS belt if you are doing both (might as well!). It’s easier to put both belts on, and then tension both.. but you can do one at a time if you like, it doesn’t really matter.
7. Turn the turnbuckles in the tightening direction until they are sufficiently tensioned. Take my advice at your own risk, but I tightened both belts until they each had about 1/2 inch of play, and they both seem to be doing fine.
8. DO NOT FORGET TO TIGHTEN THE TURNBUCKLE STOP NUTS WHEN YOU’RE DONE! You do not want your belts losing tension!
9. Start up your car, and visually inspect the belts, make sure they are not wobbling or coming off, and not making any strange noises.
10. If all appears well, shut the car off, and re-secure the skid plate.
11. Clean up, and you’re done!