Jaguar Repair: Replacing accessory belts on 1984 Vanden Plas, vanden plas, crank pulley

Question
Howard,

 The alternator belt rolled off the crank pulley so I have to remove the fan/power steering and A/C belt to get to it.  Plus I thought I'd take the opportunity to replace all the belt while I'm at it...  I'm having trouble getting slack in the A/C compressor.  I backed off the adjuster trunnion nuts and slackened every bolt I could find on the front plate of the compressor but it will only rock back and forth a few millimeters.  Is there any trick or hidden pivot bolt I need to access ?  I even slackened a long bolt at the back side of the compressor but I don't think that's it.  They sure didn't design much room to do this job, I had to find most bolts by feel.

   Thanks,

   Steve.

Answer
Hi Steve,

Most of the time you need not loosen the mounting bolts to adjust the AC compressor because the adjusting bar is large and strong. All you normally need to do is to loosed the nut on one side of the trunnion and tighten the nut on the other side which will force the compressor over. Only a few times I found the mounting bolts so tight that I needed to loosen the pivot bolts.

If this one is very tight and don't want to move and you have an Air Pump on the car, just remove the air pump and with a light and a mechanics mirror you should be able to ID which bolts are the pivot bolts if necessary. The reason you need to look first is that you don't want to loosen the wrong bolts and find you have loosened a case bolt and let Freon escape. With a mirror, you will see a triangle shaped plate mounted on the front of the compressor with a lower pivot bolt and the same at the rear (providing the car still has the Harrison compressor on it)
I did run into one that had a long single pivot bolt but I am not sure it was a factory mounting.

Howard