I saw the notorious plastic elbow on the 3.8's was starting to leak. Original at 160k miles, makes sense i guess. So took the alternator off easy, all the tensioner bolt came out fine. The tensioner was stuck on their like glue still. So I consulted youtube and they said just work at and keep wiggling at it. So i did for awhile, and the plastic elbow broke. Ok, whatever im replacing that. On this car there is only one plastic elbow, the bottom one is aluminum and part of the tensioner. That sounded like an improvement over the plastic, but uh, its not. Do keep in mind coolant on this car was not kept up, and nasty "dex sludge" stuff, opened the radiator cap and their is brown clay like stuff on the cap and caked on the side of the radiator. Anyway, The aluminum must have been all corroded because that thing would not budge. I fought and fought with it and eventually it came out. Ok so i went cleaning the plastic elbow remains out of the tensioner, and just happened to notice a piece of shiny metal laying near the water pump. It was a piece of the water pump housing, which then dawned on me that it looks like it is cast in the engine block! I believe I just ruined this motor, but if anyone has any sort of crazy idea to fix this, please let me know!! I can't get it to upload a picture either, says my quota is 168kb to much?
