Idler Pulley Failure

[CoBeerToad]

Lost mine with no warning. It didn't seize though. It just fell off. Was just pulling off the expressway and heard a load bang behind me. Didn't know what it was until I tried to make the turn onto the road and realized I had no power steering. Then I realized that the belt must have snapped.

After nursing it home, I checked out the belt and it was in one piece and had no mark on it. Took me a few minutes to figure out I was missing the pulley.

Side note: I found every piece of the pulley, but opted to get a new one anyway along with a new belt.

[tonythetiger]

Holy Toledo! I changed my belt yesterday. Actually yesterday. I checked the pulleys, but didn’t do new bearings. Should I, I just turned 100k? New water pump, (3rd) new alternator at 70k. Best of knowledge, no maintenance on rollers


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[10/10ths]

....while there are not a large number of these failures, enough of them have grenaded like this and left people stranded, and in a couple cases that I am aware of, destroyed the car with a belt fire that spread, that I feel you should replace all of them when you replace the serpentine belt.

Most of these cars are over twenty years old now. Stuff wears out. And stuff TIMES out.

When I bought mine, I had the serpentine belt and all of the idler pulleys replaced. The car is a 2004 and when I bought her in 2015, she only had 25,000 miles on her. The technician told me it was a good thing I told them to R&R the pulleys, because one of them was in bad shape upon inspection, even though there were zero symptoms of any trouble brewing.

[BYprodriver]

I upgraded to the later, lighter pulleys with better bearings.

[Tjkarp]

My pulley failed at startup. It initially sounded like a hung starter (squealing). In the process of replacing it, I discovered the Overdrive Pulley on the Alternator was seized which may have led to the failure to begin with. It was the pulley just downstream of the alternator. I ended up replacing the alternator and pulley and added a new belt as well. My recommendation is if you have a sudden or catastrophic pulley failure, check out the Alternator Overdrive Pulley carefully (on manual transmission cars). If the the ODP clutch is seized, it can put a lot of stress on the whole belt drive train.

[tonythetiger]

Originally Posted by BYprodriver

I upgraded to the later, lighter pulleys with better bearings.

Where did you source? Have a parts list, I’m doing it


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[tonythetiger]

Originally Posted by tonythetiger

Where did you source? Have a parts list, I’m doing it


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So, I’m in the fence before I button everything up. 100k and I think I would be comfortable replacing the idler pulleys or at least the bearings, just need to build a parts list. The kits out there are 300 dollars. Advice?


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