Idler pulleys and tensioner pulleys have sealed ball bearings and are designed with the same service life as a typical serpentine belt. Your serpentine belt should be checked each time you fill up the car and refill the engine oil and transmission oil. As a serpentine belt wears, side or valley wear can occur between the individual belt grooves.
Why You Should Replace Your Serpentine Belt Before It
Serpentine belt changing is so relatively easy on most cars that it is worth acquiring a special serpentine belt wrench.
It has some distinctive ridges running its entire length on one side that make it super easy to identify.
Lines going around the belt. With the serpentine belt off, does the tensioner pulley spin freely? A serpentine belt can last from 30,000 to over 100,000 miles. He said he could see stretch marks on the outside of the belt.
Rather than using a normal socket wrench.
Most car manufacturers don't specify the serpentine belt replacement intervals, but rather recommend inspecting the belt during regular services. An unsung hero tool for swapping belts in a cramped engine bay. Cracks and rot are, of course, indications that you should replace the drive belt. A worn or glazed serpentine belt may begin to squeal with age.
Heat and repeated cycling of the tensioner’s internal spring can lead to fatigue and loss of tension.
These usually have longer handles, come with four or so sockets for the typical tensioner pulley bolt sizes, and are lower profile than a normal socket wrench and socket would be. If the pulley is operating at an abnormal angle it will create excessive wear on one side of the belt. I had never heard about it getting to brown and. Up to $8 cash back if one side is wearing unevenly, you could have a misaligned belt.
If it gets to brown then it could break.
The serpentine belt or accessory belt is the main belt on your engine that you see when the vehicle’s hood is open. Check your owner’s manual for recommended maintenance on your belt. Damaged devices (alternator, ac compressor, power steering pump etc) if the mentioned devices are not working properly, this will cause a serpentine belt problem. A serpentine belt that keeps slipping off the pulley is another symptom of a bad tensioner.
One of the symptoms of this problem is increased wear on one side of the belt.
The tool itself isn’t anything remarkable, just two steel bars, one with a 3/8 inch drive male end, and the other with a 3/8 inch female end and a 1/2 inch drive male end. It is located on the. Check oil and belt tension. This means the belt doesn’t rotate in a straight line but gets twisted to one side causing excessive wear and damage to it.
I'd get it taken care of at some point. i've heard that if the belt is ever cracked or fraying that you definitely should replace it.
Check the outside of the motor—both top and bottom, as well as both sides—for any cracks or signs of wear. Squealing from a newly replaced belt usually indicates a larger problem: Fortunately, the belt can help you diagnose the problem, both before you remove it and afterward: The only place the back/flat section of the serpentine belt comes into contact with is this pulley, so it would stand to reason that if there is wear on the back side this is.
I had some chirping from my serpentine belt so i had a mechanic replace it.
The solution is to replace a serpentine belt and a belt tensioner. The symptoms of a loose serpentine belt include a loud squealing noise when the engine is started or when the steering is turned all the way to one side. Marks on outer side of serpentine belt. The automatic belt tensioner is designed to provide constant tension for the life of the belt.
Or, defective bearings in the tensioner, idler, or one of accessories driven by the belt (including the water pump).
I had told him to check everything out, but he forgot to check pulleys etc. Unlike the timing belt which is usually 'hidden' behind a cover, the serpentine belt is usually easy to spot. Side wear is typically caused by component misalignment and may be seen on one side of the belt only and will repeat across the width of the belt. He told me that's a sign the belt is wearing out!
Serpentine belt problems usually result from one of three causes:
A week or so after changing the belt the ac compressor started. So we looked under the hood and we noticed that the serpentine belt was getting brown on one side. Idler pulleys and tensioner pulleys have sealed ball bearings and are designed with the same typical service life as the serpentine belt and the tensioner. Here’s our serpentine belt tool along with the belt we removed.
