Belt Woes

[Syndicate13]

Well I've been helping to work on my friend's car for a long while now and we've finally got to a problem that we can't figure out. He has a 94 Eclipse GST 5 speed. His alternator belt keeps walking itself off the crank pulley and shredding itself to peices. We've looked at the pulley numerous times and it looks fine, the rubber that holds the outer piece to the inner is in good shape and not cracked. His alternator is brand new but it is for an automatic. We were told that the manual alt and auto alt were the same except the auto one is rated 10 amps higher. We've been through about 8 belts now and have taken everything involved off and inspected it and replaced anything that looked questionable. We are both ready to kick this thing off a cliff since it works for a day and then the belt shreds again. This is his only car and his dad is becoming upset about having to loan him his car everyday. Anywho, someone help please. At least give us something to go on as we're all out of ideas. Thanks.

 

[Defiant]

You've checked the harmonic balancer?

 

[Rx3]

This exact thing happened to me. The belt probably squeaks like a bi*** too. Two causes (or combination of both) :


1) Belt is not tight enough. I found that the hard way after going through 6 belts. What I thought was tight wasn't. Tighten the alternator belt so that you cannot twist it more than 20 degrees or so (twist as in trying to twist the grooved side face up) .

2) Your belt tensioner is bad/loose. I'd especially check the bolt that goes into the waterpump assembly. When I had this problem, mine broke off completely in the hole. This caused the tensioner not to tighten/keep the belt tightend over a period of time. This is why it is fine for the first day or two, then the squealing comes back and then *SNAP* .





Be sure to clean off the melted rubber that results from teh belt walking itself on the crank pulley. The grooves probably are packed with melted rubber.

 

[Syndicate13]

The belt never squealed before. It will run ok for a few minutes and then start to make a rubbing sound and soon you hear the first section of belt shred, we take it home and park it as quickly as possible after that. We bought a new crank pulley just in case and retightened the water pump pulley bolts. One thing we noticed though is that the crank pulley sits, or seems to, about 1/4 of an inch further in than the waterpump pulley and alternator pulley. Is that normal? I don't really think so but I don't remember mine being that way or any kind of spacer back there. I think we may try some washers behind the crank pulley to space it out a little to see if it helps, hell at this point it couldn't hurt.

But does anyone else have any suggestions or comments?

 

[luv2rallye]

If you have the water pump pulley halves on backward or it will be off about that much. Or perhaps one of the other pulleys is on backwards.

 

[kyle h.]

i just went through this on mine. thinking it was the harmonic balancer. well it wasnt. but anyways, i took every pully off and inspected them. water pump, a/c tensioner, alternator...but not the a/c clutch. well heres what i found.

-harmonic balancer was fine, i'd take yours off just to make sure.
-needed a new a/c tensioner, tensioner bolt was bent and broken (possible issue)
-bolt on the bottem of the alternator was completely backed out and threads in alternator were stripped.
-water pump pulley looked like someone had pried against it and bent up a little.


i fixed everything, replaced bolts, got new ones, tighten all the ones that were loose. made sure all pullies road smooth, didnt wobble or anything that i could notice. so far it's been about 100 miles since and now problems yet. but that doesnt say much.


p.s. i have some new problems already...i dunno if these cars are really worth all the trouble...i miss my honda