The mechanic and I fought this til night time, could not get it. Bought the pieces from autozone, the two elbows. As stated above, took the belt off, reservoir off, alt off. But for the life of me/us we could not get the piece in!!!

 

Did you remove the whole bracket? and I heard it was a Pain to do them.

 

Maybe that's what was missing.
We just removed the alt. lol
We're going at it after work today.

 

If you're trying to replace the coolant elbows then you will more then likely have to remove the LIM itself to be able to do it. I can't really think of any other way to do it. It seems like a bit more work, but after you realize that you're actually saving time (and potentially broken parts), then you find out that it's actually one of the most practical ways of doing the job.

 

He's having a hard time, since he works mostly on foreign cars.

 

Success! Alt bracket off.

 

My plastic coolant tubes run through my belt tensioner into the LIM....In the 3.8 without the super charger....the belt tensioner needs to be removed as well as the alternator and bracket and the 2 tubes replaced.Its too bad that GM engineers couldnt use their heads better and route the coolant another way as to NOT use these plastic tubes which just fall apart in time or at least use brass or aluminum tubes to solve this issue!

 

But BIGAL131 if GM used parts that didn't go bad and never had to be replaced they would go bankru.........nevermind

 

Lol, switched the parts, in the process broke off a vacuum line "tee"

 

I've done this on my 03 SS and I just did this job last night on my son's 98 Z34 and of all the surprises, the belt tensioner actually has ONE of the elbows as part of the casting of the unit with only ONE plastic elbow tube. I couldn't decide whether to cuss 'em out for only doing one, or bless them for at least casting one of them dam elbows. The stupidest thing of all may be that the replacement parts are plastic so if the engine lasts long enough I may be doing it all over again in 10 years!!!