How to Tell if Your Car Needs a New Belt (Before It Damages Your Car)

rev up your engines today i'm going to talk about fan belts or to be politically correct today they're called drive belts not fan belts now originally they called fan belts because they drove the fan take this toyota 4runner it's still got the old design there's the cooling fan and how is it driven it's got fan belts that drive it so they were called fan belts for the last modern cars have electric cooling fans check it out they're not belt driven they're electronic so belts are now here there's only one belt that runs absolutely everything even my old celica's electric cooling fans but at least it has various different drive belts one for the alternator one for the air conditioning one for the power steering belt most modern cars only have one drive belt big giant thing it drives everything now because they're ribbed they're cooled better they can last an awful long time often well over 100 000 miles but since it's the only belt on your car when they get old this one's a 2007 toyota you should change them before you have a problem and are left stranded you can look at them and inspect them for cracks as we look inside here you can see no big cracks there now you can see it's not particularly cracked up or anything and it's not making any noise when i start when they're all worn out they'll make a squealing noise but i'm driving to boston in a couple of days from tennessee and this belt's more than 10 years old so i'm gonna change it out just bolts off with ten millimeter one and two then it just snaps off now you can access it better when we look up here and we turn the flashlight on we can see right there that's the nut that you put a wrench on i'll stick my finger on it so you can see it better right on top here you put a socket on there to move the tensioner but before you do anything get your camera take a picture of the belt they go around all kinds of things if you take it off you're never going to remember all the little wiggles it does so take a picture first better with the flash too now the bolt that adjusts the automatic tensioner is 19 millimeters you need a long extension power because you need a lot of force it's on there very strong in this case down in there now it's on the adjusting nut and you pull towards the front of the car as you pull it releases the tension pull it hard and then slide the belt off as you can see i pulled the belt off here now we can remove the belt but it's very hard to do from above so we're going to jack it up it's easier to put on from the bottom so you got a jack stand and a jack nice and high so the tires are off we got to pull the right front tire off so take off the cover got a little screwdriver on here somewhere and this has a special lugs on it so we'll use that get the tire out of the way and reach under to get the belt now it's not bad for a 10 year old belt but when we turn it inside out you can see it's starting to get a little micro cracks on it is 10 years old and since old scotty doesn't trust anybody let's see if the new one's about the same size and you can see it is you're going to be furious if it doesn't fit always check them first sometimes they give you the wrong number or it's in the wrong box check to make sure it's about the same length before you go through a lot of work and beat yourself up because it's the wrong size belt and take my advice this is a gates belt belts can last a long time cheap belts won't why bother the last one lasted 10 years i'm putting the quality one on the l belt was a deco belt that's a good ball too it lasted ten years it was still holding up but it is cracking and now we fish it in from the top and then feed it in from the bottom we crawl underneath we'll see we fished it around here and now we'll go to the top to loosen the tension holding the top of the belt as we pull it towards me we slip it on the alternator and there it is hardest part snapping it on here but now we'll take this off and check the whole thing make sure all the belts are on correctly they're on the top they go around just like the picture on camera again we'll crawl under here yeah so everything's got its little belt in place so now we'll start it up here we go we'll cross our fingers a little not making any noises it's all fine so success we can put it all back together now now we'll put the stupid beauty cover back on and we'll put the wheel back on and you'll notice one thing i took the wheel off with an electric impact but i'm putting it back on with a torque wrench so it's on right to start it by hand put two of them on on opposite corners and just get them snug now it won't wobble so we're gonna get a torque wrench we'll set it in this case that's like 75 foot pounds so remove the jack stand now we can torque these two down we can easily talk them down till they click then we put the little cap back on there it goes if you have fancy lug nuts like me get your little fancy lug nut removal socket put it back in the trunk you wouldn't believe how many customers bring me cars that they don't have the tool to take their lug nuts off and it's a pain you got one always put it back when you're done using it now i'm always giving you free car advisor on youtube today i'm also going to give you a free tool i'm giving away one of these torque wrenches so you can get your wheels on right so things don't work have a chance to win place a clean non-offensive comment on the youtube comments below and in winter we'll be chosen randy by computer to get a cool free torque wrench and here's some bonus questions and answers ragnarokson says i got a 2012 accord four cylinder 155 000 kilometers how do i know when i need to recalibrate the valves okay we call it adjusting the valves well let's see what you got like 80 000 miles now i'd say do it every 70 80 000 miles hondas you have to adjust the valves other cars have hydraulic automatics hondas don't sew just i'd say every 80 90 000 miles get them adjusted and then your engine can last a really long time they can get too loose and they clack like mad but they can also get too tight and then they're quiet but then the valves are slamming against the heads and eventually they'll crack the head so for the money you pay for valve adjustment it's worth it on a honda because they do need to manually adjust it they're not automatic victor 19 says i got a 2010 camera it blows cold air sometimes freezing on a right center and a passenger vent after 20 minutes they all blow freezing cold this only happens during the day and the night it's always cold i can tell you what the problem is you just low on refrigerant when it's cold colder at night and the sun isn't beating and the sun puts a ton of heat in your car it's got to get rid of it all right at night the sun's not up so there's not as much heat for the air conditioning to cool down you have the classic sign of you just lawn refrigerant have a mechanic like me check and pop it up all cars leak a little bit of refrigerant that's 11 years old when the refrigerant is low what happens when it's hot outside the passenger side will blow somewhat cool air because the evaporator for the ac is closer to the passenger but then by the time the air gets to the driver's side it's on the other side of the evaporator which no longer is cold enough because it's low on refrigerant when it's hot outside now when it's night and cooler outside it'll blow okay because you don't have to take as much heat away but i can guarantee you have the refrigerant checked it might need like a can of refrigerant that's probably it that's just typical they all leak a little over time and you're just low on refrigerant it may sound confusing but now i explained it so you can understand why it's that way andy lewis says scotty love your videos gotta thank you my father has a saab 2 liter 2000 and after seeing your advice i put a new battery in the car and i got more acceleration and better gas mileage too thanks for your advice well yeah especially on a saab even a 2000 saab everything is computerized on it if you don't have the right voltage the car just isn't going to run right plus if the battery itself is somewhat weak your alternator is going to have to work too much all the time to recharge the battery gas mileage go down power will go down you can even with a bad battery get voltage spikes where the alternator is having to charge the battery so much the voltage spikes up and down as the battery shorts out it can destroy stuff so you know it is a good idea to put the biggest battery you can in a car and change it every so many years get them load tested with a guy like me or an auto parts store where they'll say okay you got a 650 crank connect battery you only got 400 crank and amps left good idea to change it now and not get stranded somewhere and your car will actually run better like in his case he's getting better gas mileage has more power just because he swapped the battery happens all the time on modern computerized car and that's a 22 year old stop leo weber says scotty what do you think of the show the grand tour well i like the original top gear and those are the guys from the original bbc and they had a big hassle and so they got paid a bunch of money by amazon to do the grand tour so i like them you know they're funny guys they're very educated guys too really playing games crazy stuff that they're doing and they got a much bigger budget with amazon than they ever had with the cheap bbc the bbc is an extremely cheap operation i mean i've met british guys the monty python guys john cleese in england and he said they were paying us a hundred pounds an episode when they started you know they're cheap as could be i can't blame them going to the united states and having an amazon prime pay for it they got all this money he could have a lot more fun with it you know i'm all for i can't stand the the new top the american top gear i think it's a pile of crap and i don't like the english one anymore they put this stupid hollywood star and he was garbage then he left the show so poo i never been so cheap they were still making money and they shoot themselves in the foot i like the grand tour i like those guys they're interesting guys and i got a lot of money to play around with so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music]

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 577,712

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, alternator belt noise, bad serpentine belt noise, belt, belt drive, belt noise solutions, car belt noise, engine belt noise, fan belt, fan belt noise, fan belt squeal, how to fix a fan belt, how to fix belt noise, serpentine belt, serpentine belt noise, serpentine belt squeal, squeaky belt, squeaky fan belt, how to fix drive belt, how to stop belt from squeaking

Id: Q-iiIcP7ODA

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021