VITO Van 108D engine belt tension

Hi,

The belt tension on my vito has, it appears, suddenly gone very loose so I've lost the power steering pump etc. Thinking like any other car it'd simply be a matter of swinging the alternator back a bit to tighten it, I thought it'd be an easy job. Having had a quick look though, it appears to be automatically tensioned by a big spring?

Question is, how do I tighten the belt?

Thanks.

Yes. Strangely though, I'm sure it was quite firm a couple months ago. Now there is a huge amount of slack. About 100mm. It is about 4 years old but there is no visible damage. New belt then? Just strange how it seems to be so loose. How to adjust the tension on the new one?

Thanks.

is it single belt driven? not sure...but I think you can reload the spring system...try to find some kind of scale at the tensioner there is a wheel just for tensioning...and maybe you can find a bolt for tightening it

100mm is 10 cm ...and that would be aa loot of slack... 10mm at the longest distance between 2 wheels would be about right

good luck, alex

"pjsmith" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@localhost.talkaboutautos.com...

Now there is a huge amount of slack. About 100mm. It is about 4 years old but there is no visible damage. New belt then? Just strange how it seems to be so loose. How to adjust the tension on the new one?

Thanks.

I've just removed the spring, assuming there might be some nuts to adjust it but there isn't. The spring connects to a pivoting roller which provides the tension to the belt. I can't see any obvious way to adject the tension. The spring seems fine. Maybe the belt is just very worn. There must be a way to adjust the tension somhow though, other than the spring? I can't see any tensioning wheel.

so good so far...have u checked the pulley? can it move freely to follow the springs tension?

if the pully is rather tight...you might have the effect we're fighting with

"Paul Smith" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

The pully seems rather easy to move. I can ceratinly pull on the spring without too much force and the belt tightens. Only thing is, it would seem as if the spring would need to be much shorter than it is to take up all that slack. One interesting thing. The actual tensioning roller on the pully arm, I found what looks like a sealing washer on the inside of the belt over the tensioner when I removed the belt. It was just thereattached to nothing with no place for it to go. This obviously must have been part of somthing before. All I have now is the tensioner roller (metal) with 2 groves in it. I'm wondering if there was some sort of roller over the top of that? Maybe that's broken off somwhere.