I need to replace the Serpentine belt on my 1997 Ford Escort. It has air conditioning and I have already purchased the correct belt. My issue is that I have never done this before and I cannot find any picture or information that might help my boyfriend install the new belt.

It all depends if you have an tensioner pulley. The easiest to find out is to look at the pulleys. If you find one that has a square divet/hole/notch in it, then that would be your tensioner pulley. If have this then all you simply do is take a ratchet or a breaker bar and insert it into the square hole and rotate it to relief the tension on the belt. Once you have relieved the tension then move the belt out of the path of the pulley. This will provide you with enough slack in the belt to remove it from teh rest of the pulleys. Now if you dont have a tensioner pulley then you will more than likely have to loosen your alternator. Easiest way to tell is to look at the alternator. If there is a bolt that attaches the alternator to a bracket that has slot in which the bolt (once loosen) can move either right or left. If so you will need to loosen teh lower bolt and the upper bolt. Push the alternator towards the engine in order to gain some slack in the belt. Then remove the belt from the rest of the pulleys. I would take a picture of how the serpentine belt belt is routed to refer back to when installing the new belt.