Anyone Ever Change Serpentine Belt & Alternator 2000 Focus Zetech???????????

[marathonman10]

My alternator is going on my Focus with the Zetech Engine. The labor alone from most places is around $200 plus not to mention almost $200 for the rebuilt alternator. Has anyone tackled either and where is the tensioner pulley to release the belt?? It looks like I need to remove the front tire & wheel well housing to access it. If anyone has tried or knows any info please let me know,


Thanks!!!

[osoblanco]

I did mine (2002 Zetec - I don't imagine that there is much difference) a little more than a year ago. Did a little digging and found a thread on this site that was semi-helpful. I am not computer savvy enough to find you the link, but if you search for " remove alternator" or some such, I'm sure that you will find it. I printed a hard copy, the posters name was "canuck"

I don't recall having to go in from underneath or through the wheelwell. You have to remove the coolant reservoir, the power steering flluid reservoir, and a couple of minor items on the firewall to get at the alternator, and I believe that the tensioner lives just below the coolant reservoir. My tensioner was wonky (Symptom - belt would squeal on cold start-ups). Seems to me that I took the alternator out twice - first time expecting that I could just pop in some new brushes. Foolishly thinking that a new tensioner would solve my problem, I put the whole thing back together, only to have tha car die on me on the first trial run. I don't know if the bad tensioner led to failure of the alternator, or vice versa, but in the end a rebuilt alternator fixed the problem.

It is a bitch of a job to get the alternator out - there just isn't enough room between the firewall and the engine. I finally had to seperate the alternator halves so that the pieces were small enough to extract. Ditto for re-installing. There are probably ways to disconnect the motor mounts so as to shift the engine forward, but that looked like making the problem even more daunting.

Whenever I'm faced with a vexxing problem like this, the only way I can keep from getting frustrated and just giving up is to keep telling myself that the engineers who designed the car had to have anticipated and allowed for maintenance/repair of "wear" components. "There has to be a way", I keep telling myself. "Not necessarily so" said the fellow at the shop where I got my rebuilt alt. He told me that professional mechanics hate working on cars now because there is no space, and they continually have cuts all over thier hands. I keep thinking of the TV shots I have seen of an assembly line where the whole power train -engine, tranny, front suspension - gets lifted up into a waiting body shell. Everything seems to be designed for easy "component-ized" assembly and packaging efficency, and bugger the poor sob who has to repair the thing. The whole thing makes me yearn for my seventies-era F-150, where I could sit on the front fender and take out the plugs (300 cid straight six) with my feet down in the engine bay beside the exhaust!!

To sum up, it can be done, but it ain't easy. I am lucky that I have time to fool around on stuff like this, and I have a second car to use (Focus is my wife's) If I needed the car on a daily basis, I would really consider just paying the man to do it, and get it over with.

BTW, $200.00 sounds about what I paid for my rebuilt.

[goongrinch]

i have done a few of these, the easiest way is to take it from the top which means u need to take out the bottom engine mount and the upper, jack the engine up and shift the engine towards the radiator of the car.. remove the coolant overflow bottle and u will have plenty of room to pull it out.

[psycho_baby]

I just did one of these. Dont expect to get it done fast. The way i did it was to somehow twist and and turn it to push it back toward the firewall, then drop it down to the halfshaft. Then it got underneath and took the engine cradle down and pried on it while removing the alternator from out the back where the exhaust comes out. It was such a pain, but at least i had a lift.

[KimMG]

A Haynes repair manual is about $20-, a good investment. Many public libraries have repair manuals in their reference section.

[markbornheimer]

I have a 2000 Ford Focus with the DOHC engine. I completed the task of changing the alternator. I wanted to post warning that this task is very difficult. I do most of my repairs myself and have changed alternator on other cars. On my Focus, the alternator would not come out from behind the engine without removing the front/top engine mount and being able to move the engine forward about a half inch. I tried for about an hour with all the items mentioned in the shop manual removed (coolant tank, ps resv., evap canistor.. Also, I had quite a time getting the new one lined up with the bolt holes. Ended up using a nail set to help align the holes. In all, I spent about 6 hours on this task. I would pay to have it done if I were doing it again.