Advice on Serpentine Belt/Tensioner?

[totakeke]

My Kizashi's been sitting undriven for a while because a few weeks ago, my serpentine belt randomly snapped and the car shut off from overheating after idling for a minute. I bought a new Bando belt and eventually put it back on myself. However, a few days later, the belt slipped off. I put it back on again, even though it was a little chewed up towards the inside (the side/edge that faces the engine). I drove it just once for maybe 2 miles when I came home, after idling for a few minutes, just before I turned the car off, I felt a vibration. Lo and behold, the belt slipped off again.
There's no clear indicator whether it is or isn't the belt tensioner, but I assume that could be the only culprit other than me putting the belt on wrong. It was ridiculously hard to get on, to the point where I considered that the belt could be too small. I feel like I very well may have damaged some of the ribs trying to get it back on, possibly both times.

My neighbor and I were going to replace the belt tensioner but ended up putting it on hold because we found that it looks like you need to take out the water pump to replace the tensioner. Is there any way around taking out the water pump? How likely is it that the tensioner's even the problem? The car has about 65k miles on it. You can probably tell I'm getting a little desperate to get the car going again (for cheap) since I'm posting this thread. Mostly trying to avoid a mechanic fee.

[old tech]

Sorry to hear you have so much trouble at those low miles. If you are using the Bando belt, the proper belt is 6PK 1795. I put the belt on entirely except for the air conditioner pulley and then pull tensioner back as much as you can loop in the belt around the first two knobs on the front pulley and grabbing a second bite on the belt tensioner to finish the job. Using this site I recommend you go into search using “cheap fix belt tensioner”. and then select topic titles only and then hit search button and you should come up with a post that I made about this whole thing. No the water pump never has to come off to pull the belt tensioner off. I would recommend that you do not put a cheap belt tensioner on it but if you do must recheck the alignment as described. There are I think 19 cheap fixes I’ve posted you might want to take a look at all of them. Each one has a number from 01 to19 I believe.


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[Woodie]

Search feature on here sucks. Old Tech posted a response as I spent half an hour trying to find his cheap fix post.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5303&p=51851&hilit ... ner#p51851

[KuroNekko]

Definitely check out Old Tech's write-up on it. As for my personal experience replacing the belt, it's hard to get the tensioner pulled back while under the car with ordinary tools. I really think Suzuki intended the process to be done with a bespoke tool because I was having some leverage issues trying to do it while under the car. I eventually lucked out and got it on and it's been fine since but I recall the process taking much longer than expected.
Keep in mind that earlier Kizashis had a bad tensioner that was even subject to recall, I think. Old Tech says the belt tensioner on the Kizashi is a common point of failure on older Kizashis so perhaps you need a new one, especially if the new belt is slipping off.