New to the boards and new to mercury
 

I've owned GM Cars all my life, and recently i have been offered a 99 mercury cougar.

The only problem is the ac compressor's bearing is going out, so i'm going to replace the belt with a shorter one for the car w/o AC.

I heard that it was hard to replace the belts on the 2.5L V6 Cougar, just curious if anyone could give some tips/hints on how to do it.

have a long screwdriver on hand that will fit between the pulleys and the fender well. study the belt diagram under the hood and know exactly where it needs to go. You may have to remove the AC compressor to get clearance for the belt (I haven't seen the belt diagram so I'm not sure about that one). learn how the tension is kept and keep that as slack as possible during installation. If it's a spring loaded tensioner, this may be difficult, so save the easiest pulley to reach for last. If I remember correctly, there's only about half the belt's width of space to work with and it's rather a pain in the knuckles. And good luck.