Riven02

I have had my car for about 5 months and I just broke my 2nd ALT belt. It will just stretch the belts over and over and I keep tighting them over and over till they break. It appeared to be aligned right and the bearings all seemed smooth and I couldnt figure out what was wrong so I just bought a bigger heavy duty belt this time. Well with the new belt flops on the bottom side of the alt pulley. So I guess i was wrong about them being aligned or im missing somthing else. Is there a better method to checking the alignment then just looking down it? A tool or something? The brackets appear to be the same as the ones Dallasmustang sells for my car so you guys have any ideas?

73Cleveland

Assuming the bearings are good in the alt, I would say either you have the wrong alt brackets or they are not aligned properly. A friend of mine had the same problem with hers. If you stood by the passenger side & looked down past the alt to the crank pully, you could see the alt was about 1/4 inch or so too far back towards the engine. The belt she had was a very narrow belt that sat far down into the "V" of the pully. It was old & squeeling so I replaced it with a newer & wider belt. Sounded good & the squeeling stopped. I looked under the hood a few days later for something else and discovered the belt had flipped on the pully and was riding on the outside lip. I re-installed a couple of times before I really noticed the aboved mention of the pully misalignment. I ended up putting on the old belt for now. I'm going to have to add a spacer to the existing spacer and also the lower bracket.

Her car used to have AC but it was removed. I'm thinking maybe the brackets were behind the alt brackets. The AC removal has caused the alignment problem.

Scott H.

Using a belt that is too wide (doesn't take more than 1/16") and or grooves in the pulley(s) will do this. What happens is if the belt is too wide it gets wedged in and actually travels to far around the pulley causing the the "flopping" you are seeing on the bottom side. It has to be literally "pulled" off the pulley.

Grooving in the pulleys does basically the same thing. The belt just can't slide off nice and easy.
Think about sliding down a slide on a hot day in a thong...ughhhh! maybe we better think of something else...but I think you get the point

Napa (and other stores I'm sure) have belts that are wavy on the botom. They are designed to fit around smaller pulleys w/o binding. They are very effective in these kind of situations.

Proper belt tension should have about 1/2" deflection from static in both directions. Over tightening will ruin your bearings. Usually the water pump is the first to go because of the leverage.

Good luck with it.

73Cleveland

I looked at the description of the problem wrong.

I see now what looks like the floping is like a vibration (best way I can describe it anyway). What happened to my friends is the belt actually turned inside out. Hers was a problem with alignment where the old narrow belt fit far enough down in the groves of the pully to to keep it from also turning inside-out.

As Scott said, the width of the belt is probably the problem in your case.

Riven02

The previous belts were narrower. I just got the larger one this time because it kept breaking the others.

73Cleveland

You may want to check the pully alignment of the alt with the crank pully to make sure that is not putting a bind on the belt. Maybe the brackets are bent and/or the incorrect alt spacer was used.

Let us know if you see anything unusual there.

Scott H.

73Cleveland offers good advice.
You can use a straight edge to check alignment. Any flat bar will work.
With the smaller belts, did they "flop", or did the "flopping" start when you bought the bigger belt?

If you still do not see a misalignment, and need more assistance, then we need some more information to help you out.

What accessories do you have? What does the alt belt go around.

What causes you to say the Alt belt gets loose?

When you tighten the belt how much deflection does it still have in each direction?