No alternatre belt. Bad?

[ZigsGSX97]

All day it has been raining like crazy. On a major road today, i went through a big puddle at what i thought was a good slow speed. A few miles further i noticed my power steering went, and my battery light and antilock brake light went on. Hm that's not good. I didn't think much of it until i got a few miles further when my car started dying and coming back to life. I lost so much power. Thank god i was almost home, and when i looked under the hood, sure enough my alternator belt had fallen off. As to this point my GSX waits outside still in the rain with the dangling belt. I'm not sure how to put it back on because it's a tight fit even after loosening the screws. Anybody got any helpful ideas as to how to get this thing back on. I told my dad, a mechanic, and he seems to think i might have overheated my engine and i got bit..ed at by him. How bad is it to drive a car 5-10 miles with no alternator belt? Is my engine in deep trouble? I'm gonna try and get it put back on tomorrow and hopefully it will run normally again.

 

[Korndogg]

10 miles? heh... ouch.. i dunno if that was a great idea....

were you watching your temp gauge?

also... a month ago i went through a deep puddle too fast after driving for a long time.. cold water on my hot crank pulley accelerating the seperation of my harmonic balancer...

in other words.. i bet your crank pulley has "come apart"... check the main (crank) pulley which runs all of the other belts... i bet that it has crapped the bed

and if you put your alt belt back on, and it comes back off.. your crank pulley deffinitely crapped the bed


this is what mine looked like... (pic from under the car with the splashgaurd off....
http://www.angelfire.com/pq/korndogg/car/pully/Dscf0005.jpg

 

[WhiteTsiAwd]

Sucks dont it. Same thing happened to me not too long ago, but i was lucky enough that I was about 2 miles from my house and i had another one there already.

I would think that it should be ok. Just put it back on and see what happenes. It is a tight fit but just loosen your alternator screws and slide it up as far as it can go and go from there. When i do it, i always put my crank pulley on first. But thats just how i do it.
Good luck.

 

[rowlex]

A few miles further i noticed my power steering went, and my battery light and antilock brake light went on. Hm that's not good. I didn't think much of it until i got a few miles further when my car started dying and coming back to life. I lost so much power.

Sorry to be an ass here but, how do you not think much of something like that?! I mean shit, thats like ignoring something that will make your engine overheat and likely cause you to rebuild your engine!

This happened to me once as I was accelerating hard on an on-ramp, I immediatly shut car off and pulled over, called my dad to bring me the spare from my girls car....

Incase you didnt know, the alternator belt runs your water pump!

I bet in the 8 miles you got, you put about 15,000 miles worth of wear on that engine..

 

[ZigsGSX97]

Hey guys, my car is just fine. Put the belt back on and runs normally. I got lucky this time. If i ever see a problem anything like this again, i'm pullin right over and stopping. This was the first time i had ever had to deal with something like this with cars. I didn't think it was a huge deal until i got right to my house and that's when things were getting really weird with my engine. Thank god i was right near my house and not somewhere far away. It's all good for now

 

[rowlex]

Glad to hear it!