Serpentine Belt That Doesn't Want To Go Back On
 

Hi all,

The a/c compressor on my wife's '00 Blazer failed. Specifically, the shaft seal went bad and it lost all the refrigerant. Yes, I know, I should have bought a Sanden replacement instead of the O'Reilly's special. At the time I needed to get the truck back on the road quickly so I bought what they had on the shelf. Since this compressor failed under warranty I just got the replacement from O'Reilly's. Maybe this one will last almost another two years like the last one did.

Everything went really well until I got to putting the serpentine belt back on. The belt won't go back on for anything. I pushed the tensioner down all the way but I couldn't get the belt to go under the idler pulley. I've checked all of the obvious things: the belt routing is correct, the a/c compressor is in the proper position, the belt isn't riding on the edges of any of the other pulleys. Is it possible the tensioner isn't going down all the way? The only other possibility is that this new compressor has a slightly larger pulley than the old one. Is there anything I'm missing? I may decide to grab a longer belt if I can't get this one on.

If pulley for AC is little bigger than before than you have to use longer Serpentine belt... I think 6PK2433 (Standard is 6PK2415) should be ok (in my car is ok and has proper tension). I had same Problem but my pulley was bigger for sure :) so Standard belt was too short.

I took a couple of weeks for me to get back to this project but I did. The stock belt length for these trucks is 95". I tried the 95" belt but I couldn't get it back on the truck. I even bought a new belt just in case the belt I took off the truck was too short for some reason. The new belt was just the same as the old belt. It wouldn't go back on the truck. I talked to my friend at AutoZone who has a '97 S10 truck. He told me that his truck uses a 96" belt and suggested I try a slightly longer belt. He sold me a 95.5" belt. It fit perfectly. Apparently that's the right size belt for this truck. I'll run the truck and see how this goes.