BadgerBlogger on Fox6

What a day... A few days ago, the air conditioner compressor on my truck froze... the pulley wouldn't spin at all, so the belt was just sliding over the pulley. I actually made it to and from work a few times, but I made it to the weekend!

The way my trucks belts are set up, I could not just get a shorter belt to bypass the A/C, trust me, I tried LOL even bothered mechanics at work, but it was a no-go.

So I bought an air conditioner bypass, basically just an idler pulley that fits in the same spot as the A/C unit, $30 for that, or I could have gone to a junk yard and gotten an A/C unit out of another truck, but I don't need it, so why bother... By the way, a new compressor would have been a couple hundred bucks, I'm not spending that on a truck that's almost 20 years old, even if it does still run great.

Anyway... I thought, cool, pop the belt, release the pressure in the system (there was none, so no worries) two bolts and slap it back together... NOT SO FAST!

There was actually another bolt hidden so far under everything else that I couldn't get to it. I worked for probably 3 hours total before I realized that it just wasn't going to come out, it was so tight that with my limited space, I could get no torque on it at all, so I finally broke down and had to remove this whole big mounting bracket from the engine block, some of those bolts weren't much easier to get to either... Finally I get this whole thing off with the tensioner gizmo all attached too, and I was able to get it out of the engine compartment and lay it on the ground so I could get at that #$*@& bolt...

That bolt was so dog gone tight that I had to brace the bracket with the a/c unit against a truck tire, stand on it with one foot and use a pipe on the end of a wrench to get enough leverage, and I STILL almost couldn't break that bolt free, but with much effort, it came off... I then threw the A/C compressor at the ground just as hard as I possible could! (That'll teach you!)

After that, it all went back together very easily, 10 or 15 minutes later, it was all back together and I started it up and drove around the block, nothing blew up and flew off, so I guess I am now good to go. What should have been a half hour project screwed up an entire wonderful spring day. Whoever put that one single bolt where it was needs to be hunted down and shot!

In the process, I sliced my wrist trying to get that bolt out, then I took a chunk of meat out of my finger tip getting that bracket out...Next time, I'm takin' it to a mechanic!

I wasn't sure what category to post this under, since there is no place to whine and moan, but now the truck is back on it's wheels,  I can get back into traffic, so Traffic it is!