Serpentine accessory drive belt diagram needed

Start with the diagram on the left. The right one adds the A/C belt.

Everything I can find shows two serpentine belts. Any chance the engine was transplanted from an earlier year? I looked as far back as an 1982 model, but they're all the same with serpentine belts. I did find some belt tension charts that refer to V-belts, but none of them include the routing diagrams.

Check on the front engine cover and on the core support above the radiator to see if there's a sticker there showing the belt routing.

Also, please look at the emissions sticker on the right strut tower and see what they list as the engine's emissions year. That will say something to the effect of "Conforms to EPA standards for XXXX year. If this is the original engine, that will insure I'm looking for the right year.

Rock Auto indeed shows only generators with the V-belt groove like that in your photo. It occurred to me my online service manual probably doesn't show the routing diagrams because they are much simpler than those for serpentine belts. A V-belt has to make a square or triangle with rounded corners at the pulleys. Unlike serpentine belts, V-belts can't be backward to cause the wider flat backside to run on a pulley. Where serpentine belts do that, the pulley will be smooth and what it drives won't require a lot of torque. That's typical of a water pump or idler pulley. Generators and power steering pumps are very hard to turn, so they will always have ribbed pulleys and the ribbed side of the belt will match those grooves.

With V-belts, the tapered sides wedge into the sides of the pulleys to give them much higher gripping action. Those belts will never run the top or bottom around a pulley. V-belts can only bend one way; the way they go around a pulley when they fit into the groove. They'll never bend the other way.

The photos don't show the pulley for the power steering pump. Can I assume that uses a V-belt too?

I'm going to visit a salvage yard tomorrow to see if I can find a similar model. I'll let you know what I find.

Those five diagrams you posted all have to be for serpentine belts because they run on the back side over some pulleys.

By "three track", are you saying there were originally three separate belts? And now one of them is no longer going around the AC compressor?

The service info only lists a 2.0L and a 2.8L. Did you really mean 1.8L or do you have the 2.0L you originally listed?

The 1.8 would be a carbureted engine used in 1982-early 1983 in the Cavalier. GM stopped using it in 1983 in them, but the 2.0 is the same engine with a longer stroke crankshaft and was the "replacement" for the 1.8. The 2.0 was available with both EFI and a carburetor in 1983 and 1984 but was only EFI from then on. Just dug through GMs TIS system and they don't show the routing on the V-belts in their service information either. However they shouldn't be hard to route as the belts drive specific items that have sheaves that will line up with the crank pulley drive. A fast way to tell would be to look at a parts site and get the part numbers for the belts. Then match the lengths. Going by my swiss cheese memory they drove the power steering and water pump with one belt, Alternator and water pump with another (some had an idler added that the belt went around) and A/C with a third. If it has the California emission air pump that was driven with a smaller belt.

Thanks, Steve. I've searched two salvage yards and on AllData, and can't find the routing. Apparently this is top secret or it is supposed to be intuitively-obvious. As I mentioned earlier, V-belts can only go on one way.

Routing should be similar to this. Power steering on the upper left and alternator on upper right. The AC pump could be on either side depending on which compressor it has but I seem to recall those were in the front so that's lower right. If yours has the idler on the alternator belt, the belt goes over it. Is that any help? Been at least 20 years since I've seen one and I've slept some in that time.