Ford v10 serpentine belt replacement

One little trick that makes installing a new belt easier, is to get a few of those big metal paper clips; the kind that grip 20 or 30 pages together. You can use those clips to clamp the new belt to a few of the pulleys. Check the idler pulleys, but it's highly advised to replace the tensioner pulley at the same time(youtube has a pro video on that). Be extra careful that the belt is seated perfectly before you start the rig. It can tear a new belt instantly if not seated correctly.

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I just, a few weeks ago changed ours. Not a bad job, just requires paying attention to routing when removing. Ours appeared good, but we didn’t know the belt’s history on our low mileage, but older class c.....so I changed it. We now have “piece of mind”, and kept the old one as an emergency back-up! memtb

I did mine when the idler pulley bearing started making noise. There should be a little belt routing map sticker under the hood. Not a hard job, except to have magician hands and tiny-sized tools to work in the limited space. My local Advance Auto Parts had both the belt and pulley on the shelf.

Changed the serpentine belt on my Class A F53 V10. Only hard part was had to do some from underneath (release idler pulley tension, AC compressor and IIRC power steering pump). Had to do the rest from up top. Pay attention to how it comes out and it is easy to put back. I carry a spare and use Gates belt and hoses

If you can remember the sequence of pulleys as you remove the belt it should go back on easy by reversing the sequence. By the time you get it done you will know how to do it in one-fifth the time but that will not even help next time 5+ years later.

The serpentine belt on a V10 operates all of the engine accessories, the most critical of which is the water pump. When we first bought our 2003 Class C I bought a spare belt as a precaution. It is necessary to remove the air filter assembly to get to the spring loaded idler pulley and the alternator. As a pre-trip test, I tried using my 1/2" breaker bar to loosen the idler but was unable to do so due to space limitations. I bought a serpentine belt tool which worked great. Our spare belt is a Motorcraft 2C2E-8626-DC.

While a belt failure is a rare event we actually had it happen to us while camping at Pebble Creek about 20 miles from anywhere in the northeast corner of Yellowstone. When I started the engine in the morning there was a clunk followed by a whap, whap, whap sound. Upon opening the hood I discovered that a ground squirrel had been in the engine area and had been caught in the belt. The squirrel had paid the ultimate price and the belt was badly damaged. The spare belt and belt tool saved us that day.

I took our 2004 E350 to the most popular auto repair place in our town with population 1000. That shop is so popular I had to wait for 2 months to get the belt changed. $100 Canadian.

A Ford mechanic once told me that Ford said that you didn't need to worry about cracks in the serpentine belts, and not to change them until they started to loose chucks of rubber.

Take a couple pictures of the belt installation before you remove it.
It's more accurate than a drawing.