Wednesday 8 April 2015

A small problem: the auxiliary belt

While driving on Sunday afternoon through the North Yorkshire landscape, I suddenly heard a noise. First I thought something was flapping in the wind against the car, some fabric or similar. But then I heard the noise coming from the engine. I opened the hood while the motor was running - and saw that the auxilliary belt had a piece hanging from it which was slapping against the interior of the engine compartment. I switched off the engine, then cut off with a scissor the piece that was hanging from the belt. It seemed that one of the 6 grooves had split, so that 5 were together and one was hanging off. Now the belt was partially narrower than usual.
I continued driving slowly, but after a few miles there was again noise. The rest of the belt had also reduced itself to 5 grooves instead of 6. I cut also that piece off. Only a small segment was now there with the original 6 grooves. I kept slowly driving, keeping the engine below 2000 rpm - not very funny for the people driving behind me...

But I made it back to Leeds ok. Then, on Tuesday (Monday was Bank Holiday) I brought it to she shop - was done in Wednesday. The mechanic told me that there was a wrong alternator mounted! Someone previously had installed an incorrect alternator, which only had a pulley with 5 grooves and was slightly misaligned - with no options to provide fine alignment. They now mounted a smaller belt - just 5 grooves wide. At least that fit well the alternator pulley. I shall observe if it breaks again. Possibly will need a new alternator then...

So far no problems, runs fine.

No comments:

Post a Comment