How to Replace Serpentine Belt Tensioner 2002-14 Honda CRV (2024)

Hi. I am Micheal from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

The hood release cable on this vehicle is located on the driver side kick panel, right down on the side of the gas release door is. It's down on the flat part. Pull, and release.

The safety latch is right above the H. Reach in there, move it aside. Bring her up. Now you can put your hood rod in the location which is marked by an arrow. The first step is to remove the power steering reservoir. Just disconnect it from the bracket and set it aside so that we have access to take the serp drive belt off. Serpentine drive belt.

So, that is on a bracket that slides in, so the lock tab has already been pushed off. And it gets rusted sometimes so you have to work it back and forth. And slide it out.

Now you can move it over here, and remember not to disconnect any of the hoses. There's no need. And now to take the serp belt off, the tensioner is right here, and that is the head of it. And you're going to be using a 14 mm wrench. The longer the wrench, the more leverage you can get. And you're going to slide that on. And you're going to go with the tension. So on this, you're going to go, pull the wrench down clockwise. So I'm going to go to the right. Take the tension off the spring so I can take the belt off.

Reach my hand down, slide it off that power steering pulley. The tension is going to pull the wrench back. That is one tight spot. Now I can pull the belt off the rest of the way. Let me get that out of the way. Okay. Now the next step they say is to remove the power steering pump. Now to remove the power steering pump, we're going to use a 12 mm wrench, and get up here and break this top bolt free. Now we can move down to the secondary mounting bolt. So I am going to use a 12 mm socket with a short extension, and it's beyond the vision. So I can see it almost through the pulley.

There we go. Okay. And now we're on. Going to break it free. Now I am going to go ahead and move the upper bolt out the rest of the way, using a ratchet wrench. Beautiful. Finally. So now that the pump is dismounted, we're going to undo the bungee cord and see how much we can get this out of our way. I'm going to remove the AC bracket line right here, just so that I can get a little more flex and accessibility to the power steering. Okay. Let's see what we got here. And you don't want to bend it too much. It is aluminum. It's going to give a little bit.

And now that that's much better. Out of the way. We can, really going to be able to see the serp belt tensioner that we are removing. I'm going to get my bungee cord again and move this out of the way. So, the two mounting bolts for this serpentine belt tensioner is one is here, and the other one is located down in the back. You can barely see it with your eyes. I took awhile looking at this to see how I was going to get to that back bolt, and it's not a normal practice to take a tensioner apart, meaning the actual pulley off of the tensioner, but in this case, this is the way I think we're going to have to remove it and install it. So, I'm putting a 14 mm wrench on the bolt that attaches the pulley to the tension and I'm going to break it free. Once that's broken free, I can just use my fingers, pull the bolt out.

Now I can set that aside. So, the mounting bolts on this are 12 mm sockets, and there's two of them. And after quite a bit of mulling over, I've discovered my quarter inch set is what will fit in there the best. You can barely see it from the back there, and then you are going to break that free. I'm going to go ahead and loosen the front one before I take the back one all the way out. Now I can take the ratchet off and use the extension and socket probably by hand.

Take that out and set it aside. Now I don't know at this point whether the back bolt and the front bolt are the same length or if one is shorter or longer, so I'm going to make sure I place it in order, so I don't mix the two up. I'm going to slide my hand in the back there, find it, and just unbolt it. Okay. She's ready to come out. Let's compare an see if they are the same length. So that's the rear. I'm going to put that on the back side. I'm going to put that in the front. They are. So good. No confusion here.

So, there's three mounting bolts on this serp belt tensioner. You got one here, one there, that's hard to see. You can only really see it with your ... once you get your socket up in there. And then there's a center bolt here, in the center hole of this tensioner. It's 12 mm socket. See if I can get that by hand. Use a deep 12 mm socket. See if I can get in there. Yeah.

See if that's enough. Okay. And pull that socket out. Pull that bolt out. And that is longer than the other two mounting bolts. So I know that goes in the center, and those two are the outer edges. Now with all of the bolts out of the way, should be able to slide this right up. So here we have a '09 Honda CRV serp belt tensioner. The new one from 1aauto.com, and the factory one. They both have the same height, mounting, drilled hold for the power steering pump, and as you can see, both pulleys are the same diameter for the serp belt. Nice milled aluminum for a flush fit.

Don't forget to get your parts of 1aauto.com.

Okay. So now we're going to install the serp belt tensioner that we bought from 1aauto.com. And I am going to mount the front mounting bolt and the center bolt. And then I have to take the pulley off to get that back bolt in, but I need it to be bolted and firmly in place in order to loosen that up. So we know that the center bolt was the longer bolt of the three. I'm going to put that in first. I'm going to start the front one. I'm going to use a nice little quarter inch set up to snug that down.

Take that extension off. And I don't really want to tighten these up yet because the back hole, you want this tension to move around a little so that you can line that bolt up. So now I am going to have to take this pulley off, the tensioner, in order to install that back bolt, and that's a 14 mm head on that bolt, so I am going to use my quarter inch ratchet. Get in there and I am going to break that free.

Take that off by hand. There's a nut in the back, so if you can put your finger down through here and ensure that nut doesn't get pushed out, because obviously you're going to need that for installation. I'm going to set this aside. And I'm going to get the back mounting bolt. See if I can get my hand back in there and install it. And now I'm just going to come in at this angle. I can feel it, and it's right above there. Perfect. See if I can wiggle this around a little bit. Find the threads. I got it. It's really tight spot. Don't let your fingers get in there. As long as you get a couple turns with it and you feel comfortable, then you can go ahead and put your socket on and turn it in the rest by hand.

So I got my 12 mm quarter inch drive deep socket on there. Tighten that right up with my finger. I'm going to tighten the top one here. That's pretty snug. So is this one. So now I'm going to get ready to torque this down, once I get this center bolt bottomed out and this one. The torque on these mounting bolts is 16 foot pounds, so we're going to give that 3/8 or maybe even a quarter inch torque wrench in there and top those down to 16 foot pounds.

Okay. So 16 foot pounds with these mounting bolts. Okay. Let's hope we can fish it down in the back there. Get my arm out, maybe I can get some throw on it. That was it. Okay. Gonna use a short socket to go inside here. 12 mm. There we go. So now it's time to reinstall the pulley on that tensioner.

So on the old tensioner, I'm going to show you how that mounting nut for this tensioner bolt, how it just goes through. It has a seat in the back. It has a cut out of a hex and that's why I'm going to be bringing my hand down and holding it on the new tensioner so when I start this bolt, it doesn't push it through and you don't lose it in the engine. So now with my hand on there, I'm going to work the other one in. Okay. There we go. I can see now. There we go. Bring that up. Perfect. I'm holding the nut in the back and I can thread this bolt right in and assure myself that that nut is not going to push out, drop into the engine. Okay. Now, the time to torque this, and the torque on this bolt is 43 foot pounds.

So, I can't get a torque wrench in there, so I am going to have to tighten this with a quarter inch ratchet. It's a 14 mm socket, and it's 41 foot pounds is the torque spec, so I'm going to really give it a good ... and that should be good. I mean, I'm pushin' on that tension on the spring and I felt it move about a good quarter inch once it bottomed out. So i feel it's going to be plenty tight enough. So, before I would install the power steering pump, I would get my serp belt diagram, look it up, and start my belt on the bottom pulley so I can see it clearly.

Now I am going to partially install the serpentine belt on the down below part, by the crank and the water pump and the AC. So it's easy access at this point without the power steering pump installed. Okay. Here we go. So, just want to get it on the AC and the crank wind up properly. There we go. I think I got it now. Yep. So thats gotta go around AC, I mean the alternator. Okay. So I've now got that pulled, lined up correctly. I'm just going to set that aside. Get my light out of there and install the power steering pump.

So now with the belt on all the pulleys down below, lined up in the grooves, I'm going to reposition my power steering pump. Okay. Get my mounting bolts. So I'm going to mount the power steering pump. I'm going to put the top bolt in first. Snug that up by hand. There we go. I'm going to use my quarter inch ratchet with 12 mm socket. See if I can get it to start.

Now I'm going to go down below and put the other bolt in. The bottom mounting bolt. This is a tight fit and hard to even see, but I'm going come into this angle. Okay. I got it started. That's good. See if I can get my ratchet wrench in there and start it. Tighten it up instead of a socket. The torque specs on the power steering mounting bolts is 16 foot pounds. So I am just going to snug them up and then I am going to grab my torque wrench.

Now with both mounting bolts snug. It's 16 foot pounds. Then I am going to go to the top. There's a lot of problems with torque wrenches. Sometimes they don't fit in places. See if I get my socket on first, if I can slide the torque wrench in enough. No it's not going to fit in because the head of pulley and the head of torque wrench is too thick. So, in that case, I'm going to tighten it, snug it right now. Going to use a 3/8 ratchet. So make sure I get a good snug on it. So, 16 foot pounds is really not that tight, so a good quarter of a turn. That's guarantee to be fine.

Now we can install the belt. So now that I have my power steering pump mounted and torqued on the top of the engine, I took it to liberty of raising the vehicle and taking down the passenger inner fender well splash guard so I can access the drive belt a lot easier. So I have my serpentine belt tool, 14 mm socket up on the tensioner, and I'm going to push it clockwise and slide the belt on the crank. And let the tensioner back down, and remove my tool. And now I'm going to just double check. You want to make sure it's in every groove and not overlapped on any pulley. Looks great. Now I can reinstall my passenger side splash guard, and lower the vehicle.

So now that I've lowered my vehicle, and remounted the inner fender well shroud, rain shroud, I am going to install the reservoir, and that's simply plastic guide clicks down on this lock. I'm going to line up my hose here, make sure that goes in place. And slide it down. That's in place. Nothing is in the way and now I can take my AC line, bring it back over and remount that. And that was a 10 mm head bolt with a nice big flat washer.

There's no torque for this. It's just a bracket, so we're just going to snug it right down. It's got a nice rubber bushing. And, that's good. And now we're all set. We're done.

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