Fan belt blew on the way back, 3 miles from my house!!! Atleast now I know what that spare belt was for that came with the car.

So I was looking at the belts and the Clymers (maybe its haynes) has little to say about belts. I see the tensioner for the ps pump, but I dont see anything for the AC compressor. Is there one down there I'm just missing?

The good book says that in order to get fan off I need a ground down wrench, will a flare wrench do the same??

BTW 300TD is almost a rally car I swear, I was able to go twice as fast as my buddy in his 02 Jetta. Ground clearance be damned she still handled well on the pavement to. Love this car, too bad its my wifes

Do you need to remove the fan to replace a belt?

I have used an open end wrench on mine. But you have to be careful not to round the bolt heads off. I would not use a wrench made in a country whose name started with the letters "C" or "T."

Taking the fan off makes everything MUCH MUCH easier. I think I use a open end wrench or a box end wrench to get mine off. Do be carfull not to round the heads off, they are pretty soft. I also too the fan shroud off to have a little more room. The gound down wrench would be nice but it is possible to do it without one.

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I have not used a flare wrench, but did grind the nose off the box wrench. It works fantastic.

The open end wrench is guaranteed to give you problems if those screws were installed for quite some time. I've cracked them loose with an open end wrench, but, I was right at the very limit before they rounded. In fact, they were damaged to the point that I dropped the $9.00 at the stealer for four brand new screws.

Why do you need to remove the fan? IIRC, the belts are of sufficient length to go over the fan........possibly the A/C belt might be too short.

Which is okay, since it's not a "fan" belt.

I tried a flare nut wrench just to see if it would fit. The head of the wrench was too thick to pass through the space between the bolt head and the back of the fan. So I could not get the wrench on to the bolt.