> Just had a new belt installed at garage, and 2 days later it broke.......I
> assume it was on too tight.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> thanks
I'm working from memory here...
There's that 3-inch long thingie from the top of the engine bay that
unscrews and releases tension on the serpentine belt (looks like a
verticle pipe about an inch thick), but before that you have to loosen
the bolt in the idler pulley. And the real trick is to take the tire
off to get access to all this, and DON'T GET UNDER THE CAR without
proper jack stands.
And if you mean the power steering belt, you actually "tighten
clockwise" to loosen the belt, opposite of what you'd think, and
there's also another little bolt that has to be loosened first (the
normal way). That bolt is a little hard to spot at first, but keep
looking. As I recall, it is nearest to the firewall.
All this took an hour and a half when I did it, because access is
something of a pain, literally. Some folks claim to do this in just a
few minutes, I assume with practice and better tools.
No, never mind. All this shouldn't matter because you should go back
to the shop. You better hope that the belt was defective, because if
it had so much torque on it that it broke, then your pulley bearings
got a real workout.
Aubrey - 03 Jun 2007 09:27 GMT
The shop called me and said my belt tensioner (for altenator) was gone, and
I need one. They say that is why my belt broke. Is this possible? Gee I
thought if the belt tensioner was gone the belt would not go tight.
??
> > Just had a new belt installed at garage, and 2 days later it broke.......I
> > assume it was on too tight.
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
> it had so much torque on it that it broke, then your pulley bearings
> got a real workout.
jmattis@attglobal.net - 04 Jun 2007 14:13 GMT
> The shop called me and said my belt tensioner (for altenator) was gone, and
> I need one. They say that is why my belt broke. Is this possible? Gee I
> thought if the belt tensioner was gone the belt would not go tight.
I don't think you have a "tensioner" in the sense that a spring-
loaded, pre-determined amount of torque is applied as in some other
cars. The slack is manually taken up during installation of the belt,
by rotating the adjuster that looks something like a pipe. The idler
pully has a bolt in it that locks down this position once set.
If you have this setup, like my '96 did (same generation), all the
idler does is spin freely on one axis (through the center of the
idler) once it is bolted tight. It sounds like they're saying it
froze. Funny they didn't notice it had a problem such that it would
break two days later. They usually start making a screeching noise
you can hear a block away. If it stopped turning on its axis, then
they should show you the old part to back up the story. It probably
would have eventually broken or thrown the belt if this happened.
Aubrey - 05 Jun 2007 01:07 GMT
> > The shop called me and said my belt tensioner (for altenator) was gone, and
> > I need one. They say that is why my belt broke. Is this possible? Gee I
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> they should show you the old part to back up the story. It probably
> would have eventually broken or thrown the belt if this happened.
I did install the belt pulley and everything seems ok thus far.
What I am puzzled about is I did request the old part back, and the old part
does not look like the new pulley I installed. Secondly, on the old part the
pulley is moving freely.....so I question how this caused my belt to break.
jmattis@attglobal.net - 05 Jun 2007 05:00 GMT
> What I am puzzled about is I did request the old part back, and the old part
> does not look like the new pulley I installed.
The OEM idler is about 2 1/2 inches in diameter with a bolt going
through the center of it. It's painted black. It doesn't look very
fancy for what it costs. If they didn't return something like that to
you, then it "sounds like" they found something in the corner of their
shop to play show-and-tell.