On most Hondas, when I need to loosen the serpentine belt, I can usually get a wrench in with enough room to turn it to loosen the belt enough to remove it. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s a tight fit, but on this Honda Element, I didn’t have enough room to swing my wrench. I don’t have a serpentine belt tool, which is a specially designed wrench setup that can fit in tighter spaces, so I had to get clever.

What I ended up doing was putting one of my stubby combination wrenches on the belt tensioner, and then used my breaker bar to move that. Because of the angles, I was able to move it far enough. This would’ve have been even better if it was a 13mm bolt on the tensioner, rather than a 14mm, because the 13mm would be a tighter fit on the 1/2″ breaker bar, but a little electrical tape helped it stay in place.

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-Dan