The air conditioning pulley in your Nissan or Infiniti 3.5 liter VQ35 engine is part of your drive belt assembly, and should be serviced during every other timing belt change. Other reasons for learning how to service your VQ35DE AC pulley can stem from a bent adjustment rod, or worn pulley. Over time your tensioner pulley can wear, causing damage to your drive belts.
This is what our How to service your VQ35DE AC pulley guide is for, to help you the DIY’er take care of your AC pulley and replace it. To begin our guide, you will need to raise the front of your Nissan 350Z or Infiniti G35 and secure it. If you are not familiar with the safety guidelines, try checking out our primer on how to safely work on your own vehicle.
Our guide also assumes you have removed the lower plastic engine tray, the one with the oil drain panel. If you do not have this already removed from your vehicle, go ahead and remove your lower VQ35 engine tray now.
With your VQ35 raised and vehicle safely secured, go ahead and take a look at your AC pulley tensioner. There’s a long 14mm bolt that adjusts the pulley up and down, setting the tension for your drive belts. Turn this bolt counter-clockwise to loosen and then remove your VQ35 air conditioning belt.
Now that you have the air conditioning belt removed, go ahead and remove the 14mm nut that holds the tensioner pulley to the bolt.
Once you have pulled off your air conditioning tensioner nut, you can remove the front side backing plate and metal bearing.
Remove the outer ring and the metal bearing, and don’t forget the order and sequence in which you are removing these rings.
Remove your air conditioning pulley and don’t forget the backside metal bearing or the retaining cup.
Now that you have this part removed, you can go ahead and swing out the long adjustment rod. If you are having problems removing this rod during our How To Service Your VQ35DE AC Pulley DIY guide, try to back out the 14mm rod further until you gain the proper clearance.
We’ll be ditching this rod and pulley, as the pulley is very worn and showing some signs of cracking. It also appears as though our VQ35 air conditioning tensioner bolt is slightly bent.
Remove the 12mm bolts that secure the bracket to the VQ35 engine, and you can pull off the tensioner bracket and clean it. Once you are done, remount on your engine and re-install the 12mm bolts.
Slide the new tensioner rod in place, and align it through the bottom hole. Push the front of your new VQ35 air conditioning tensioner rod through the adjustment slot, and slide the pulleys and metal bearings in place. Make sure to install the bearings correctly, or you’ll have one noisy pulley upon startup.
With the new adjustment rod in place, you can slide on the tensioner pulley. Turn the adjustment rod clockwise to tighten the belt, make sure not to over tighten the adjustment rod, and make sure there’s enough tension and just the right amount of deflection in your drive belts.
That does it for our How To Service Your VQ35DE AC Pulley DIY article, if you have any questions or comments please leave them below!