Changing My Serpantine Belt Before WF Was a Good Idea...

Last week I was going over the car to see if I needed any work before I left. Well, the serp belt was a bit cracked and I thought it would be a good idea to change it. New belt installed, we leave for WF. On the way home. Literally 2 miles from my house we hear a loud bang and smelt burning rubber. I got off the road and to a gas station where I find shreds of rubber everywhere and a nasty stench under the hood. Here's what we saw:

Did the a/c compressor lock up? Looks like a/c sling on the hoses and accumulator.

81X11 wrote:

Did the a/c compressor lock up? Looks like a/c sling on the hoses and accumulator.

Nope, AC still works. What all that fuzzy stuff is, is shredded underhood insulation.

Jeez! Zero fun. Glad you made it home.

-Mike

I had that happen on my work truck. Got in it in the morning and turned it on, bang bang bang.....wtf open the hood and half the belt was shredded.

I needed to be 75 miles away in one hour...I got my diag cutters and trimmed the biatch, drove 20 miles (on the way) to the company motor pool yard and got them to give me a loaner.....as I didn't have even 5 minutes to sit around (plus they had to order the belt).
I had just gotten the truck back from a PM and they put a new PS pump on.

My guess is all the pulleys were not aligned right. Might wanna check that out.

Damn that sucks! I hope you kept the old one in the spare tire well like I do.

95BRMW wrote:

Damn that sucks! I hope you kept the old one in the spare tire well like I do.

I did actually! We changed it at the gas station and drove home

Great to see you and the wagon arrived in one piece...........

Cadet57 wrote:

95BRMW wrote:

Damn that sucks! I hope you kept the old one in the spare tire well like I do.

I did actually! We changed it at the gas station and drove home

We? How many peeps does it take to install a serpentine belt? I don't think Nick is going to be impressed when he gets here.

Glad you made it back though.

Bewber wrote:

Cadet57 wrote:

95BRMW wrote:

Damn that sucks! I hope you kept the old one in the spare tire well like I do.

I did actually! We changed it at the gas station and drove home

We? How many peeps does it take to install a serpentine belt? I don't think Nick is going to be impressed.

Glad you made it back though.

My buddy held the tensioner open while I ran the belt. It was hot, I didn't feel like breaking a sweat doing both.

I was all kidding and stuff.

Bewber wrote:

I was all kidding and stuff.

haha I know dude.

That is one thing I appreciate about serpentine setups, if there's enough room to get your hands/tools in there, they can be changed pretty quick with only one person. I did enough WOT runs during downtime in my CVPI taxi that I got used to changing the belt about monthly. If it failed en route on a fare, I'd tell the passenger to remember where the meter was, and I'd pull over, move the shredded belt out of the way, lean a breaker bar on the tensioner, slip the new one on, let off the breaker bar, then get back in and go. Got it down to about a 90 second roadside job including getting the belt/breaker out of the trunk, piece of cake. Cab garage would credit me $30, I found an Auto Value store selling them for $17, so I got paid $520 an hour for my labor, LMAO!