hey everyone, i'm havin a weird problem with my camaro. it's making a grinding noise, and i'm not sure where it's coming from. i'm going to try and take the belt off and see if it's coming from the crankshaft or something else, but i'm just curious if anyone has had this problem before. it's on a 98 v6 with the 3.8Liter engine. it is leaking some coolant from the lower intake manifold gasket, enought to lower the coolant so that i need to fill it once a week. any ideas would be extremely helpful.

 

A couple things that come to mind is the A/C compressor/clutch, and the water pump. Get under the car and look up at the water pump and see if there's seepage from the weep hole. If that's the source of your coolant loss, it could also be the one making noise. But removing the belt like you're planning and giving the pulleys a twirl by hand is a good place to start.

 

i took the belt off, and discovered the noise is coming from the compressor. i've never serviced ac systems before, is this going to be terribly difficult to fix?

 

no its not horrible, you can replace just the clutch and pulley so you don't have to worry about messing with the refrigerant.

Everco/A/C Clutch (48660) | 1998 Chevrolet Camaro 6 Cylinders K 3.8L SFI OHV | AutoZone.com

 

do you know how to? if so, would you be able to list a set of steps? i'm pretty good at figuring it out, i just need to know if it's worth the work or not. does anyone know if i could get an ac delete belt? and would you know what the belt routing would be for it? thanks for the help guys!

 

You need to remove the nut in the middle of the clutch (best to use an impact, if you don't have one you can use a ratchet you just have to figure out how to hold the clutch from spinning) than with a 3 jaw puller (you can rent one from Autozone) grab the pulley and pull it off. Now just press the new pulley and clutch on and reinstall the nut. I'll see if I can find a video for you.

edit: theres a snap ring holding the pulley in place, i forgot about that. so pull off the clutch than the snap ring than the pulley.