2. Stop the engine, open the hood and look for the drive belts. Lighting yourself with a flashlight, feel the belts along their entire length with your fingers, checking for cracks and delaminations. The presence of abrasions, areas polished to a shine and other obvious defects on the belt is also unacceptable. Inspect the belts on both sides, for which twist them. Defective belts must be replaced without fail.
3. Check the condition of the ribs on the underside of the belts - they should have the same depth with no signs of deformation.
4. Evaluation of the tension force of the belt can be made by pressing on it with your thumb in the area in the middle between two adjacent pulleys. The pressure must be firm enough. The parameter characterizing the belt tension force is the value of its deflection when pressed. As a rule, if the pulleys are spaced 180 to 280 mm apart, the deflection should be 6.4 mm, a pulley spacing of 305 to 405 mm corresponds to a deflection of 12.5 mm for a V-belt, and 6.4 mm for a multi-ribbed one.
5. On early models, one belt is used to drive the water and steering pumps. The tension force of this belt is controlled by a special tension roller, access to which is open only from below. The second, shorter belt drives the alternator. The tension of this belt is adjusted by adjusting the position of the generator assembly. The longest belt drives the A/C compressor and is equipped with a tension pulley mounted on top of the unit. On production models since 1995, only two multi-ribbed drive belts are provided, the tension of one of which is adjusted by shifting the steering pump assembly, while the second is equipped with an upper tension roller.
Replacement
1. To replace, loosen the belt tension (see above) and get it off your pulleys. To replace the inner belt, you must first remove the outer one - make sure they fit correctly in the pulley streams.
Note. It is best to replace all drive belts at the same time.
2. When buying new belts, take the old ones with you as samples - replacement belts must strictly match those removed from the car in terms of size.
3. After replacement, adjust the tension of the new belts (see above).