So I've driven home without the alternator belt a few times recently. I here it squeel, smell a strange burnt rubber/ tuna fish odor (weird, I know...), then the "no alternator" lights illuminate. I pulled over immediately afterwards because I've had experiences with this before and know that the flapping belt will "wedge" the air pump belt off and you have no cooling. I reinstall the air pump belt (good thing I always carry a small assortment of tools) and head home. I have 23 miles ahead of me with no alternator, but I have an Optima red top so it's all good. Operating temp stays in the green with just the air pump belt. It seems to hold more contact with the pulley over the alternator anyway.

So I went to Autozone and bought all 3 of their 15315 belts in stock. I made short work of changing the belt only to hear it snap again on my test drive around the neighborhood. I clean the pulleys, and replace it one more time. It snaps again as soon as I get up to 15MPH. They have a one year warranty so I'm going to go in and get replacements.

So I pull the car in the garage, pull the snorkel, fan, and shroud off to get a closer look and see theres coolant dripping down between the weep hole and the main pulley. I put two and two together and I assume the coolant is spraying out of the weep hole and causing the belts to slip and burn up.I guess the burnt rubber and burnt coolant smells mix together and give off a tuna fish odor, lol. I also noticed one of the snapped belts took out an OMP line which I fixed.

Anyway I ordered a new pump so it will be fixed, but has anyone else experienced this? The alternator belt is the only one breaking. I assume because it's the closest to the engine.

 

i had an S5 that would eat alternator belts too, and actually it did need a water pump too, although a small one. the pulleys were clean, and lined up ok, so i'm not really sure what was going on.

the fix was to use an OEM belt, for the S5's Mazda still supplies the OEM mitsubishi belt, which is much higher quality than anything else you can buy.

 

You are tightening the belt too tight. i would kill waterpumps this way till i figured you cant pull it super tight. loosen it up and you are good to go.

 

does the pump spin

 

The belt isn't too tight. Maybe 1/2" of deflection. The pump does spin. Although not freely like an idler pulley, but a little resistance. The weep hole seems to be spraying onto the belt.

 

I had a weird alignment problem that was caused by the alternator that was on the car when I bought it... the pulley that was on it was 2 pieces. When I replaced the alternator, the new one came with a pulley that was only one piece.

The old pulley's mis-alignment caused stress on the the water pump pulley and the alt one. I would get fine black powder under the alternator and the water pump until the belt would just break. It would take a long time though.

No issues these days.

 

I would think that the back to back bearings in the water pump are dry and seizing up probably can feel some movement in the pulley when you try to lift up and down on the pulley . If the bearings are poor it will also make the seal leak . I'm sure when you change the pump your problems will be gone. it probably leaks most of the coolant onto the alt belt causing it to slip and delaminate .

 

It would take longer for Anti freeze leaking on the belt to make it break, thinking weeks

 

I'm gonna say gross misalignment, or (though I know you already said it wasn't) over-tightening.

 

yeah true, the belt shouldnt just break off that quick. check all the pulleys including the crank, make sure its all on and on tight. remove the belts and make sure all the pulleys spin without resistance, with the problems your having it shouldnt be to hard to find out whats going on. make sure the belts are all aligned a quick visual inspection should help here. obviously the waterpump needs to be replaced so this should give you all the room you need to verify all the pulleys are good and straight. make sure the fan is bolted down tight too.

 

So how long have you had this car ? did it just start doing this belt breakage ? surely you would notice if the pulleys were misaligned . If they were misaligned the other belt should give problems to .

 

My water pump went south last month. It was weeping coolant pretty bad. Actually took me a week to notice. By the time I changed it, it was bad. If I drove it for 5 minutes the coolant buzzer would go off.

I never had an issue with belts slipping. The coolant just dripped onto the front cover and eventually onto the ground.

If coolant is 'spraying' out of the weep hole then change the water pump.

 

Id all 4 bolts are not on the pulley attaching it to the Water Pump,it can create enough slop to break the belt.
I found this out.It also makes enough slop to take the bearings out on the pump and make it leak.

 

I've owned it for about 3 1/2 years. The first belt break was about 6 months ago. I think it was due to the air pump mount cracking. It took until a few days ago for the belt to deteriorate from slow coolant leakage to break I guess. What I think happens is the coolant sprays onto the belt and causes it to loose grip so it just sits there slipping and overheats and breaks. It definitely squeals and smells burnt so its a slippage issue. When it broke a few days ago it took out an OMP line. So when I replaced the belt again it broke within a few minutes because oil must have been spraying onto it. I didn't notice the OMP line was broken until I had the fan shroud out.

 

Replace the pump they're not that much and like mister said check and make sure the pulley is turning true and straight and is lined up with the rest of the pulleys . as far as 1/2 inch belt movement goes I guess it depends on how much pressure you put on the belt when checking . Have a good one

 

sounds like your **** is a little fucked up, you need to go through and un-**** your ****. Its not a lot of money to get everything squared away

 

Oooh, tech talk.

 

going for the tough love approach, guy has a constant coolant leak ( I mean is there any better way to ask for a engine failure than a coolant leak? ), broken brackets, etc

regroup and go through everything for some trouble free driving enjoyment

 

I liked your first way of putting it better.

I completely agree however...it's easier and more efficient to just go through a whole system at once- in this case that would be water pump, thermostat, rad cap, hoses and belts- and be done with it. The alternative is to replace one part at a time and then chase the problem (losing coolant and constantly bleeding air the entire time) as it dominoes through the system...at which point you end up replacing everything anyway.

 

meantime I got in trouble for using the "f-bomb".

With the age of the car you take an all or none approach, totally agree the entire cooling system should be gone through. Not sure what he did with the OMP lines but it also makes it sound like the car should be parked for a few days while everything gets put back in shape

 

The car was parked after the problem was found. I am replacing everything with new parts. The problem was the water pump weeping onto the belts and causing deterioration. The second time around I think it was the cracked OMP line and pump leak in tandem spraying onto the belts causing rapid breakage. Everything has been pulled off the car, inspected, cleaned, OMP line repaired, and will be reinstalled when the new pump shows up.

 

oil leak and a coolant leak will not cause a belt to fail instantly, you said it failed once you hit 15mph

 

How would that not cause failure? If the belt can't get traction because it is being sprayed with oil and coolant it will sit there doing a little "burn out" over heat and snap. It didn't start squealing until I got up to 15-20 MPH which is something like 4000 RPM in 1st.

Upon closer inspection, and reading specifications on these cheapo belts I'm beginning to think they're par of the equation as well. They just can't take the stress of slippage and just snap when they reach their tolerances. They are only rated at 175 degrees f. The interior belt band is nothing but some sort of string. Almost feels like cotton sewing thread.

Next time I'll try a good Bando belt. That's what came with the car. It was retired 3 1/2 years ago just as preventative maintenance. It had a metal band.

 

Ive had cars that leaked for months and months and never threw a belt. My old CJ7 leaks everything and the belts are so old they are almost plastic.
You didnt rev the crap out of the engine that it slipped it just broke. Either your alignment is off or too tight, loose... Some error caused this. The leaks need to be repaired either way so keep us updated on your progress.

 

So I replaced the water pump, disassembled every pulley for cleaning and inspection, degreased and scrubbed the (already clean) engine, and repaired the OMP line. I re installed every thing with lock washers on the air pump and alternator tension brackets. I've put about 500 miles on it in the past 3 weeks with zero problems. I still plan on upgrading to Mazda or Bando belts and ditching the cheap Autozone ones. I have them tension to about 1/2 of play.


My theory is the weep hole sprayed water onto the air pump belt causing it to unseat and come off the pulley then wedging under the alternator belt causing it to snap. Then after that it happened so rapidly because the OMP line had a crack spraying oil onto the belts, and we all know oil is much more slippery than coolant.