I have a slight noise coming from my ac pully. I can hear it. I removed the belt and started the engine. I don;t hear the noise. The pully turns freely but it sounds dry. How hard is it to remove just the pully and replace the bearing? I can do the work myself, 17 buck at autozone for the bearings. Do i need to remove the enitire unit or will the pully come off with the unit intact? Thanks for the help. Tired of hearing the noise.

 

hey i got the same problem.

 

Remove serpentine belt.

Remove clutch plate. One bolt - don't loose the shim(s).

Remove large snap ring.

Pry pulley off compressor shaft with a pair of flat-tip screwdrivers. Use the screwdrivers only under the outside lip of pulley to avoid damaging the the coil.

Reassembly is the reverse.

 

That easy? Thats without removing the ac unit?
Hope that gets rid of the noise. It spins freely, just feels dry when I spin it by hand. I ordered brearing today, have it tomorrow, might try this weekend. I replaced the idler pully because it had the same feeling, dry. I spun it on my finger after removing the idler pulley and it felt like there was a flat spot and it sounded dry. One down, one to go. All the other pulleys spun and sounded fine, just those two.

 

Hey Layedout02, have you fixed your problem yet? I got a new bearing Friday night and replaced it. It was the ac pulley. My truck runs so quiet now. Once I got the pulley off, I could feel that it was dry. Took me like and hour, hour and a half to do it. I took my time and was not in a rush. It was really easy.
Hope it takes care of your problem too.

I have 185,000 miles on it now. 1999 F-150 Ext Cab

 

I went to change mine and the front skidplate was in the way, the bolts all rotted solid so half of them just spun free of the clip, got that out of the way and half the bearings fell out of the pulley it was so bad it broke the aluminum snout off the compressor, and it looked as if the compressor had been leaking freon, was all green on the seam. So I got a used complete assembly from my local scrapper for 75 bucks....it was a PITA to replace though, next time I'd remove the fan and shroud. The bearing is pressed into the pulley, the hammer and socket trick didn't remove it, just demolished the remains of the bearing....but the compressor was junk at that time anyways so I ended up replacing everything......all this with 148k miles....:sigh:

 

was it hard to replace that bearing ?

 

No it wasn't. I pressed it out and pressed in the new one. The bearing only comes out one way.

 

it'd be hard without a press.....

 

I don't have a press either. I used a vice mounted to my workbench. I was just careful doing it. Used the old bearing as a guide. When we pressed the new bearing in, we used the old one in front of the new one to keep from damaging the new one and since it was the same diameter it pushed on it equal all around. Got to improvise with what you have. To remove it, we just opened the vice to make the opening just bigger than the bearing and set the pulley on top and tapped it out with a punch and hammer. You learn to work with what you got. It works for us, have done lots of things. Hope maybe that will help.

 

I tried that, and like I said I just demolished the old bearing and the only thing left was the outter race and I couldn't budge it.

 

We also soaked it with blaster too. Maybe that helped? Or I have been really lucky?

 

Going to attempt this bearing replacement this weekend. Learned how by this post...thanks for sharing this info. Big help. I'll be using a vice...but i typically use the socket trick....a bigger socket to accept the bearing and a smaller socket to push it out....... Ex) Vice | Big socket | Bearing | Little socket | Vice. Once this is set up just vice away and the bearing SHOULD slide into the bigger socket. Let u know how I make out.....40 bucks for the AC bearing at NAPA....