exStrat

Hello All,
I was finally fortunate enought to finally have found an AE and just picked her up last week or so. After driving it around for about a week (everything going great), I was finally initiated into the club last night. One the way home from work the radio started cutting out and finally the car died on me about 2 blocks from my house after going into limp mode about a mile or 2 out. Popped the hood and noticed a nice alternator belt just dangling there. So I went to autozone today to pick up a new one, and figured I might as well change the other 4 belts.

I ran into some issues almost immediately after I got the new belts. The reason I went to autozone was because Dayco's website said that the autozone near me sells their belts. So I went to autozone and picked up what were Duralast V belts. I figured they were the Dayco one's but rebranded. Heck they even share the same product numbers.

https://www.autozone.com/external-en.../303271_0_8039
http://www.daycoproducts.com/part?category_id%3D1084%26year%3D1988%26make%3D26% 26modeltype%3D1%26model%3D686%26description%3D1226 3%26part_number%3D15320

So the first issue I noticed was after installing the alternator belt, the air pump belt, then proceed to install the AC belt, I noticed I had no AC pulley compared to the FSM image. Just so I'm sure I'm not crazy. The image below with the red circles in it is where the AC pulley should be correct? Meaning at some point the AC got pulled, which would explain the AC not working in the car.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SjV...ew?usp=sharing

No AC no biggie, for now. Moving on, the next thing I went to put on was the power steering belt, and I noticed that the belt the gave me, which is the same product number on both Dayco and Autozone's listing was too small. There is no way I can ever get it around the pulley's like the diagram in the FSM. You can see that in image below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jv7...ew?usp=sharing

Did they give me the wrong belt? I compared it to the belt which was on the car originally. The original belt was not a V belt, has no markings, and is clearly bigger than the one Autozone gave me. So I decided to put the old belt back on for now.

So now comes the fun part. After getting everything on and adjusting the tension, I warmed up the car and did some redline testing. BOOM the old power steering belt gave way. It was pretty old and already had cracks in it, so I'm not surprise it broke upon redline testing. No power steering, no big deal until I figure out the right belt. But now whatever belt that was on there isn't going to be much help finding a replacement for. I'm hoping someone might have some info on this. I'm probably going to try buying the Mazadatrix one and see if it works? This one is the large one compared to the AC/PS one, so I'm thinking it should work?

Cart Price Check Part:15-9090-N326-9U

Anyways, after the ps belt decided to go. I continued to test the alternator and air pump belts. The air pump belt seems to be okay. But the alt belt didn't see to be. There was a loud wine at any RPM's above 4K. I keep rev'ing to see what would happen, and low and behold, that snapped too. A brand new belt snapped from taking it up close to red line. So now comes the fun part. Did I screw up with the deflection on the alt belt or perhaps it's something bigger? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the FSM. In the FSM, the diagram shows the arrow points to where you need to push the alt belt. I was presuming I wanted the belt to move between 14-17mm from start position to pushed in/down position? Is this correct or am I mistaken? Either way I tightened the alternator has high as possible on the adjustment bracket because the belt they gave me seemed a little loose, and this seemed like the only was to get a 14-17mm of movement on the belt. Any lower down the bracket and the belt would push down way more than 17mm after measuring with a tape measure (I use this trick to measure chain slack on a motorcycle). So I'm stuck as to whether Autozone gave me the wrong belts, because well, mistakes happen, belts get put in wrong packaging, fall out of packaging, put back in wrong spot, etc etc. Or did I misunderstand the FSM deflection stats and made the alt belt too tight and it broke upon the high rev's. The air pump belt seems to be okay....for now. I compared the Duralast belt to the belt that was originally on there, which happens to be a Gates belt. And it appears the quality of the Duralast isn't on the same par as the old Gates. It seemed thinner, as in the rubber was not as thick as the Gates one. I know people have had problems with the Gates one also, so I didn't want to try that brand. I wanted a Dayco belt, and presumed that the Duralast was a Dayco re-branded since they shared the same product #, but now I'm not so sure. For now I'm going to order all the Mazdatrix alt belt and the power steering one and see what happens.

Sorry for the long post. Any thoughts tips, and info would be much appreciated.

exStrat

fixed image links

Sideways7

iTrader: (7)

Yeah, definitely no A/C! Car obviously originally had it based on the bracket you have. Not sure what to tell you about the P/S belt other than it looks like the wrong one. As far as the breaking belt, I find it very, very unlikely it was snap immediately from over tightening. The worst I have heard of is extra wear on the front bearing. If it snapped immediately, it was likely just a faulty part. That said, make sure you can spin the water pump, alt, and air pump without major problems. Its unlikely, but it could be that something seized.

BTW, be careful driving without the alt belt because one of them also operates the water pump.

Hot_Dog

Check the number on the belt versus the number on cardboard sleeve. There have been a couple occasions where the belts I bought was mis-packaged. I've found that v-belts with cogs work best especially for the alternator. As Sideways7 mentioned, make sure that the pulleys rotate freely before installing the belts.

exStrat

Thanks guys. Yeah I have a funny feeling the belts were mislabeled or mis-packaged. I'm going to try O'Reilly's tonight and pick up their Gates XL belt, which seem to be crazy over priced at $22 for an alt belt. But we'll see. I'll make sure to check all the pulley's are spinning freely. I'm definitely not driving the thing without the belts.

Dak

You're stuck now and have to buy local due to the broken belt issue but next time around try rockauto.com. GatesXL belts are almost half the price of O'Reilly's from there. I've used Gates for years with no problems though as of late I've been giving the Bando brand a try as they are cheaper than Gates and claim to be an OEM supplier. That said I ran a single Duralast belt on my Alt.( I have no air pump and a dual belt alt. pulley and nobody seems to stock two of the same belt size locally) for awhile with no problems.