Serpentine & AC Belt Change
 

2008 Mazda 5 sport: Was wondering how difficult it would be to swap out my belts? It squeaks when the car first starts, but goes away after running maybe 20min. Did a search and found that you just cut the AC belt, loosen up the compressor to remove the Serpentine belt. Then reinstall. I'm pretty sure I can get that part going, but how hard is the reinstall. Once belts are on, how hard is it to get the compressor lined up for the bolts w/the belt?

It's either that or pay the $250 for the dealer to do it.

Well it only pays .6 hours labor so i don't understand how the dealer figures it's worth $250 bucks. Rent the drive belt tool from a parts store and do it yourself. You don..'t have to remove the ac compressor.

Ac belt is a stretch belt. Gates makes a tool to install the belt for a few dollars. Cut the old one off and use the tool and rotate the engine (with a wrench) to stretch the new belt on. Pretty easy job that took less than 5 minutes.

Once you have removed both belts, take a very close look at all the groves on all the pulleys. Dust & dirt gets squashed into the groves making funny noises. Get a pick and go over each groove & scrap anything out. Most noticeable on the air-con belt/pulleys.

The Gates tool is not an engine specific tool, and will not work on an 09 Mazda 5. Loosing the compressor bolts and tilting the ac compressor didn't work either. I tried stretching and rotating the crank shaft with no luck. What finally work for me was to remove all 4 bolts from the ac compressor, slip the stretch belt onto the ac pully, line up the 2 front bolt holes of the compressor, and then using a bottle jack, I lifted the compressor into place. Luckly the rear 2 bolt holes lined up enough so that the bolts threaded in. After that the 2 front bolt went in, tighten them up, and the belt was on. Hope this helps someone!

Gates tool
 

The gates tool worked fine for an 07. I can't speak to any other year but I expect it would work for any car with the same 2.3L engine with the AC compressor bolted directly under the engine drive pulley.