Aux belt questions 2.1td

[locoboy]

Hi Guys i have a metallic ringing noise when i rev my car.

I have nailed it down to the AC pump clutch, with the ac off when i rev the engine i can see the clutch on the pump rattling and when i touch it (not with my fingers!) it stops so i know its that.

I need to either get a new (second hand) AC pump £40 i guess, plus a regas of the system ?????????? any prices but i guess its going to be another £40 odd????

Or i can dispense with the AC pump ( or just leave it bolted on but fit a NON AC belt to the car and just bypass the pump) and obviously have no AC.

I tried to change the aux belt some moths ago andit was a nightmare for me, i guess i MUST have been doing something wrong because it took me hours and i got really f*cked off trying to tension the belt propperly - i ended up getting my local garage to do it for me, but it pissed me off that changing the belt defeated me.

Its a 2.1 td 1998, can anyone point me in the direction of a how to series of instructions for changing the aux belt? Even better if it has some detail in tensioning the damn thing.

Thanks Guys

[mjb]

First, the AC compressor... I'm reasonably sure it's possible to change the pulley+clutch without touching the compressor itself.

The belt tensioning I don't know about, but if it's like my V6 you may find that the tensioner should be freely moving albeit very springy tight, but it isn't. My tensioner was pretty much seized and needed replacing, but I didn't realise this and had a right mare trying to tension it using brute force...