Anyone ever had their A/C tensioner pulley bolt break? I just replaced the timing belt in 2-3 months ago. Perhaps I tightened the A/C belt too much?

 

 

Were you able to extract the remaining bolt easily? The only thing I can think of is too much belt tension.

 

Is the pulley still spinning freely?
For future reference the pulley bearing is relatively easy to service - take off the cover and clean out then repack with grease, or you could press out the old bearing and fit a new one. On my 99 Crv I was working in that area and decided to take the pulley off and service the bearing, glad I did there was very little grease and all dried out, cleaned out/re-greased and now good for another 100k miles.

 

Yes the pulley is spinning quite nicely with no play. I can get it going for a good 30 seconds before it stars slowing down. I think it was a combination of over tightening the bolt and over tensioning the belt. I have a replacement bolt coming and then I will source a belt locally.

 

How are you going to remove the broken off stud, it's horribly cramped in that area?
How much free play did your belt have?

 

To remove the stud I plan to take off the wheel, open the plastic wheel well cover, then if necessary remove the engine mount to lower the engine on a jack. The should give me a direct path to the bolt, then with some extension and a drill I am going to try drilling it out. What I don't know is if that bolt passes all the way through. If so I could try drilling from the other side and perhaps it will move on its own.

As far as the belt, I guess it depends on when I checked it. I drove it for several days with a weird noise and the A/C was still working. After the bolt broke I think the the belt was still holding the pulley in place at an angle but it was still following its route. It has a lot of deflection, like 1 inch or so when i felt it. I cant believe it stayed on as long as it did.

 

I'd think you'd struggle getting a direct path to the bolt even if you removed both right side engine mounts and lowered the motor, doing that will allow a degree of lowering but perhaps not that much. I suppose you won't know till you try, I had both front lower engine mounts and the rear mount off recently, there was still a good way from the lip of the metal side panel and the location of the pivot bolt, I'll make a note of measuring it tomorrow becuase I still have all the plastic covers off and let you know.

I definitely don't think you can drill from the other side but get a lefthand drill bit and hopefully it will screw the bolt out in the process of drilling, handy things those for snapped bolt extraction, also if it it looks properly seized try heating up the surrounding metal if that's possible.

Then again I have a RHD CRV, the aircon is on the passenger side so may be different to yours, what side is your's?

 

This is a JDM gen1 CRV. I am currently on an island in the middle of nowhere and in this country JDM vehicles are popular so this is what was available at the time. I am not opposed to drilling a hole for better access in the sheet metal. From what I can tell, the bolt is somewhere near the level of the crank pulley. I was able to lower the engine more than I thought possible when changing the timing belt. I'm hoping it will be enough to see that bolt.

 

This is the best picture I could find from a youtube video. He already has the engine lowered a few inches. With the engine mount out of the way, I think I could lower it more than this and get a better angle at the bolt.

 

Ok looks like it could easily be possible, I was also thinking cutting a hole in the sheet metal with a hole saw would also be an option.
So JDM is also RHD(right hand drive)?

 

Yes, JDM is indeed right hand drive. It even has the useless navigation system.

 

If I remember correctly that bolt threads into the ac pump bracket. You could remove the 4 bolts from the compressor tie it off so it doesnt hang from the lines and then I think 4 bolts that hold the bracket to motor and then the 2 lower motor mount bolts should not be to hard. Then you can put it in a vice and extract it that way?

 

Only four bolts hold the compressor to the bracket and the same to the block as stated above, if it were me I would just remove the compressor bracket and lower engine/torque mount and work with that, I believe the a/c tensioner bolt hole in the bracket doesn't go all the way through. I wouldn't cut or drill into any metal in that area, there are some important "structural" pieces in that area.

 

After looking at the JDM schematics, I am inclined to agree with you guys. The belt is already off, the engine mount will be disconnected. I don't have to move the compressor very far. I just need to wiggle it enough to pull the bracket out. It may be a project for this weekend. Hoping for no stripped bolts.

 

Does the pivot bolt mount into the removable aircon compressor bracket?

 

According to the diagram it does.

 

That's lucky gives you a little more space to manoeuvre.

 

You may wanna go out a couple days before and soak any bolt on the compressor and bracket you can get to with some penetrating oil and let that sit and try and break up some of the rust. Ive always done that and had fairly good luck.

 

 

Final update: Its been a while but I finally got the bolt and pulley replaced today. Wow that is tight space to work in. I was able to accomplish it without removing the AC or mounting bracket as originally planned. Something I also noticed is that the broken piece of bolt still in the engine was originally about 1/8" recessed into the bracket. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to remove it. Today after driving around for about 2 months I noticed the remaining bolt had worked its way about 1/4" outside the bracket. I was able to unscrew it with just my fingertips after dropping the PS belt and removing PS reservoir bracket for more room to fit my bear claw sized hands. After that I just unbolted the vibration mount bolt, slipped the new belt on laparoscopically and bolted everything back up. Ran the new belt for 5 mins and was satisfied with the tension. I made sure only to tighten the pivot bolt to what felt like 15-20 ft-lbs. Job done.

 

Great news Zion, always awesome when a potential nightmare repair turns out to be an easy fix

 

on 8th gen civics, specifically the 06, it was prone to this, they rerouted the belt and made it bigger

sounds like this was needed for this model and gen as well

 

ME FKN TOO! I thought I just had bad luck. Mine just broke 30 minutes ago flush to the compressor. How do you go about removing the shaped bolt?