Xantia aux belt change musings.......

[Gaskin]

As you do. Just checking front brake hoses flagged as advisories on last MOT (nothing seems wrong.....) when I noticed the state of the aux belt. Borrowed time sprang to mind! I knew it should have been changed but hadn't got round to it. So that was my afternoon sorted. Fairly straightforward apart from this.
If you have one of the auto tensioner pulleys that need rotating to allow a bent rod to be inserted to hold it to allow the manual tension to be set. (Confused yet?) Then don't bother to lock it until after you have removed the old belt. First release the manual tensioner fully. Because if like me the existing belt is slightly too short (only by 4mm) then you will not be able to get the auto tensioner thing to move in the right direction to push the bent rod in! This took me a lot longer to work out than to type.
And just a couple of questions:
When I removed the ECU and cover the bottom bit of the cover has a hose connected to it that I guess carries air to cool the ECU. Is this true?
I assume that you set the manual tension so that the bent rod can just be removed from the autotensioner. Is the right?

All I have to do now is change the brake hoses I originally set out to do..... Anyone got any good ideas about how to deal with rusty brakepipe-to-brake hose connections without destroying the unions?

Cheers

Duncan