VW Camper 1.6 Diesel Fan Belt - Mr Fox
This van, which is lovely but slow, has got a strange arrangement for the fan belts, the crank drives a belt to the water pump, which has 2 pulleys on the end, the second one drives the alternator, I want to tighten the belt between the crank and the waterpump, the belt is a bit slack and it has started squealing in the wet, there is no obvious means of tightening it, as the crank pulley and the waterpump, are fixed relative to each other.

Any Ideas ???

Thanks
VW Camper 1.6 Diesel Fan Belt - bell boy
washers between the pulley sides maybe?.
VW Camper 1.6 Diesel Fan Belt - jc2
That was how it was done on the A/C beetles.
VW Camper 1.6 Diesel Fan Belt - Mr Fox
Do you meen that the pulleys are conical, there doesn't seem to be any way to adjust them in / out, although there are 4 x nuts on the front, where would you find the right sized washer ? I would expect there to be some kind of tensioner pulley, like on a cam belt, but there isn't anything like that

Thanks
VW Camper 1.6 Diesel Fan Belt - Number_Cruncher
If there's no other obvious adjustment, a two piece pully with spacing washers is **probably** how the belt is tensioned.

The belt/pulley interface has a vee profile, so, to increase the tension if the belt is too slack, the two halves of the pulley need to sit closer together - making the belt ride higher or at a larger radius from the centre of the pulley. You need to take washer(s) out from between the pulley halves. Usually there's enough room to store these "spare" washers in the outer section of the pulley, under the 4x nuts you mention.

So, in your case, you dont need to find any washers - there's probably already too many in there!, and it's just a case of moving them out from in between the pulley halves.

If this belt has been slipping and/or has become quite slack, it might be better to fit a new one, and set the tension right on the new belt.

Number_Cruncher
VW Camper 1.6 Diesel Fan Belt - Screwloose

Another possibility is that the waterpump is eccentric and it rotates in it's housing to tension the primary belt. Are there three clamping bolts holding it in?