Anyone know what this one does? Can I bin the ali bit and move the alternator over the other side?
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It looks like a tensioner or idler pulley. Yep loss it and put the alternator on the other side.

Is that a Zetec-S engine?

On the old Mondeo Zetecs they used it to spin the water pump the opposite way.

I'm not sure on that one though



[Edited on 20/6/06 by muzchap]

No air con poss?

If you lose it then you need to make sure that the belt wraps around the pulleys enough. Without that idler the belt would only be wrapped around a very small part of the crank pulley and would undoubtedly slip.

Mine has been fine with just a alternator on the inlet side, water pump pully and crank pulley. It's how most of the companies do it, nice and simple. Ford tend to use a idler pulley and sprung tensioner to auto adjust the belt as lots of things run off it like PAS/air con/alternator/water pump. But in our set up there is very little presure on the belt.

A pic of my set up...
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It is a spring loaded belt tensioner, you can move the alternator to the other side but you will need to make up brackets & a slider so you can tension the shorter belt.
No problems with slippage with this set up as you are not driving too many ancilliaries
Regds
Ian