Car Is Eating Belts...Please Help

[stangman98]

Ok, here's the deal. About 500 miles ago my car destroyed a belt. Now we noticed that the belt is getting chewed up again. It looks like the tentioner has too much slack . The belt is riding up against the timing cover and not in the middle of the pulley like it should. Everything looks to be aligned right. The timing cover is slowly eating away at the belt . It actually slip off one of the grooves on the AC and screwed it up too. I have no idea if the tentioner is bad of what the hell is going on. Any Ideas????
I am suppose to be at the track in 2 weeks for a shootout and need to get this fixed ASAP.
Thank Everyone In Advance
Damon

 

[99greenstang]

well, if you suspect the tensioner is bad, grab a belt tension gauge (they can be had at napa i believe) for the automatic tensioners, (make sure it's not for the manual v-belt design) they are only a few bucks and the spec for it should be out there too. You may want to go carefully and look around each pully to see if any are damaged, and grab a straight edge as well, to check for alignment of the pullies, rotate them several times and check it in vaious positions as it may appear aligned in one position when it is infact out of alignment in another.

 

[mpcv2000]

Looks like you need a new tensioner .

The spring gets fatigue after a while and it can be bent also .

Buy a new one they are not too expensive

 

[Black_Cobra]

That tensioner is supposed to be sprung pretty tight. I had to use a 1/2" drive breaker bar to install the belt on my car. If you can move it easily by hand then I'd have to say the tensioner is weak and needs to be replaced.

Another idea, next time you have the belt off have a close look at the accesory pullies, make sure they all spin freely and that there is no wobble to the them.

FWIW, the only time I've blown one of these belts was on my 5.0, after it sat for a year. I fired the car up and there was smoke from under the hood and then it snapped. It turned out that the smog pump had seized. But I digress, I don't think your car even uses a smog pump.

 

[Kevin2811]

I vote for tensioner also.