Our car is a Mazda protege 2002
So we have two belts that need changed and this is the serpentine belt and the alternator belt, now we could put the serpentine belt on but then we would have to take it back off in order to put on the alternator belt which needs replaced anyhow. So we have both off and won't be putting the serpentine belts replacement in until the alternator belts replacement is in first.
Now, it just so happens we bought ourselves the replacements for both belts so check on that one.
Now we first figured that we needed to raise the car to get to the alternator belt up in there and all, as we would have to unscrew the bolt on the bottom center of the alternator and we didn't think that we could reach it from the top so easy, so we needed a car jack and a jack stand and all that, accounting the car was on a hill.
But we decided that we don't want to do that as it can be dangerous to jack a car on a hill, even with the jack stand and even with stops for all four wheels in place, as the jack can still fall due to the slope and crush the person underneath the car.
Now we decided that we were going to fix the car from the top but being inexperienced as this is our first car we faultered at the thought of removing anything other than the bolts needed to be removed explicitly to change the belts and preferred to remove as little as possible, as the more is removed the more complex it is to put back together.
So we decided that maybe we could reach our arm in there and unscrew the bolt on the bottom center of the alternator belt. Now I didn't know what exactly the size of the bolt was, and the crevice to stick our arm into was to small, and we struggled to get our arm in and out of the crevice.
So I covered my arm in oil to make it slippery enough to Slip into the crevice, and I went ahead and found the bolt with my fingers, and I rubbed it in oil. Then I take m arm out and I go back in with a bit of paper, making an imprint of the bolt to get the size and shape.
It was a hexagonal bolt in need of a size 14 rench.
So we try to get the bolt and everything seems great and we have the rench grasping the bolt firmly, however, the space is to tight for the renches long handle.
So we are going to go get a special rench that does well in tight spaces such as this, so we can get the leverage to get the bolt off, an then install the new alternator belt, and then it's all downhill from there, because we next put on the serpentine belt, and then we will jump start the battery and our car will be running again.
I think this type of rench might do the trick except this is ten inch and we are getting a 14-
The good news is the engine is good, the alternator is good, no issues with the gasket, the oil is clean and isn't murky or spotty or mixed with coolant, the coolant system was wonky but we think this was due to the belt issue and that once that fixed we won't have to keep pouring water directly into the reservoir. (As the coolent was not flowing well due to the belt issue and the water was a temporary solution, when this is fixed we won't have to keep like thirty jugs of water in the car) Luckily we don't have a leaky reservoir either.
We do need to eventually change the sparkplugs and we already have that but it doesn't need to be changed right away not yet.