A FCar Mechanic told me how to change a T-belt without droping engine.

Yes you can change the belts in this sort of way, personaly I think its better to drop the drivetrain, that way you can check all the hoses/bearings/seals that your also supposed to do as part of a major service

 

I could be wrong, but it isnt it a nasty angle you have to tilt the engine to to get the belt off the bottom pulley? It could put alot of stress on the engine mounts I can imagine. Then again, if you only tilt it for a few seconds to get the belt off, it may be ok. If you just have to change the belt, then it may the way to go to just drop the fuel tank. Surely there has been a few guys here that have done it this way? Maybe they can give us some insight?

 

Yes you can, and I know how, but I DO NOT recommend it. As Pap pointed out, it is NOT good for the motor mounts.

How? I figured it out when I was removing the tranny on my car to rebuild in. Again, I DO NOT ADVISE DOING IT THIS WAY. But just for the sake of making it known how, I will say how I figured out they do it.

As stated the gas tank needs to be removed. To do that you must fully get the shift cables out of the way.

Then what you need to do is remove the rear cross beam on the subframe, the one under the tranny.

After that the big bolt that holds the tranny to the subframe, the one that is under the air box, gets removed. This allows the entire engine and tranny to be tilted. What happens is the weight of the tranny falling, due to not being held in place by the bolt, lifts the front of the engine enough to get the belt off. But.....it also puts all that weight on the engine mounts, and the added stress can cause them to fail.

So if you try doing it this way don't be surprise when you have busted engine mounts.

For the last time, I DO NOT RECOMMEND changing the belt this way.

For all the work that you need to do to remove the tank, which means disconnecting the filler lines, vapor recovery, and fuel pump lines, the rear cross beam, and tranny bolt, you may as well just take out the subframe altogether with everything in tact. You have much, much, much, better access to everything, and you don't foul up the engine mounts.

But anyway, now you know.

 

Cheers for that Ernie. Not as simple as it seems this way.

 

Your mechanic friend should lose his "license", because he'd be doing about a quarter a** job on the service. So what if you technically can change the belt with the engine inside the car? What exactly have you accomplished other than shaving off a couple of hours labor? What about the tensioner bearings, rollers, and water pump?

Then again, many of the 30K services I've seen on the 348s have been the half a** variety so what's the difference?

 

These cars are very labor intensive and I am all for finding ways to streamline the job as long as the result is still a quality job. We actually started a 30k on a 355 in a fact finding mission the "In the car way" and I found we were making way too many compromises to leave me feeling comfortable so we just fell back and did it the old fashioned way.

Nice try but we won't do it that way here.

 

So, in essence your mechanic was being straight up - he said it CAN be done, but HE wouldn't. Not worth the (comparatively) small extra labour charges IMO, and an AC recharge etc wouldn't go amiss anyway.