Hello all,

I am looking to change my crank pulley to a lighter, smaller one. I thought I saw a link on here before that showed how to do it. I went through all the DIY and couldn't find it. Mainly I'm trying to find out how to loosen the belts so I can take them off.. I couldn't see the tensioner to loosen it. Any help would be greatly appriciated!!

 

The crank pulley you need a special tool to take off, search honda crank tool in google. I found mine for 35 bucks on ebay.

Its pretty simple just put the car up in the air, take your passanger wheel off.

Now take off your splash shield, If you dont know which one, look in the passanger wheel well there is a little opening that you can put your finger in and theres a circle of plastic triangles, this is so you can put your wrench in there and spin the crank without taking the shield off

Once you have the shield off(it stretches across the entire underside of the car to the other wheel) You will be looking at your crank pulley.

Now go to the top of your car and look at the big pulley right next to the plastic engine cover, that is your power steering pump. There are 3 bolts but dont take them off yet, take a tape measure to the bolt to the right of the pump, the bolt that has an indent in the engine cover leading to it, measure the threads from the top of the bolt to the end of the rod and mark it off this is important because thats your tension adjuster for the pump and you want it to be back where it was before. now just loosen all of the bolts. there is one that is hard to see near the side engine mount aswell.

Once you slide that belt off its time for the A/C and Alt. belt. Take a look down at the belt and look for the pully that is shiny, that is your tensioner. Take a 14 millimeter wrench to that bolt and push it twords your fire wall, be careful though because there is a lot of tension. Now simply slide the belt off.

Ok now its time for the crank pulley. You will have a really hard time to take this off I promise. If you have an air gun, use it, if not this is what you need to do. Go buy a 19 mil impact socket( the black kind) then buy some impact extensions long enough to reach out of your wheel well, then buy a 24" breaker bar. You will also need a long metal pipe, at least 4 feet long. Now take your crank holder tool and fit it in there along with a breaker bar attached to it, and prop it against a piece from your suspension that isnt going anywhere.

Now take a jack stand and line it up with the crank bolt, connect your extensions and socket and put it in, let the extensions rest on the stand at the very end of them, right where your breaker bar plugs in. Take your breaker bar and put it in so that it is standing straight up, attach the metal pipe to it and cross your fingers nothing breaks. Slowly begin to push the pipe to the rear of the car and when you hear a really loud snap, either something broke or the bolt is off. If you bought all of the tools I said to buy nothing should break.

Congrats now you can remove the pulley.

The rest is self explanitory, once the new one is on tighten the bolt to 181 ft lbs of torque and reconnect all of your belts and reinstall the splash shield.

Good luck!

If you are still clueless to the tensioner look at the timing belt DIY for the TL it will show you which one it is you want to take off, however its pretty easy to identify if you look, once again its the shiny pulley in there and I dont believe there are any other shiny ones.

 

ok, thanks for the information. I heard the bolt was tight, but not that tight. I do have a puller to pull it off and I am putting on a smaller one, so marking the pump might not help me much. Thanks.

 

You dont need a puller. It slides right off, just give it a couple taps with a mallet.