Hello all,

This is my first post, as I recently acquired a 1995 S600 (W140) for better or worse

For brevity sake, I will get to the issue at hand, as follows -

1) Serpentine belt begins squeaking
2) Squeaking turns into horrendous grinding sound
3) Lift the hood and as pictured, it appears my Belt Tensioner is failing and has now "moved" or "fallen" forward and is now dangerously in the way of my fan blade (You can see chipping on the fan blade tip in the picture, as the blade has brushed up against the now canted tensioner pulley).
4) Not sure exactly how the pulley came to fall forward and in such a precarious position (center bearing failure?)however I am hoping someone may have experience with this issue and/or repair on the V12 model?
5) I have found many videos, etc. online for a belt tensioner repair for just about everything but the V12 - In particular, I am trying to find the best way to access the belt tensioner, so I can remove and replace it - It looks substantially easier to access in the 6 & 8 cylinder engine bays. For example, do I need to remove the fan and/or perhaps [dreadfully] the coolant hose currently in the way. Is it accessible from the bottom with the car raised?
6) My local dealer is estimating 3.7 hours of labor for this repair, leading me to believe this model may require a bit more work as compared to the shorter repair videos I've seen on other models, at least from an access perspective.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance for the assist.

Peace,
-dLo.

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