Well last week’s alternator issue has cascaded into more problems. The current theory on why it failed is that the main lead to my secondary fuse panel had broken loose and was overworking the alternator (also explains why the thermostat on my fridge has been acting funny). It was only after disconnecting my main battery leads that I discovered the fuse panel lead was hanging on by a thread. After I finally got the new Denso alternator in place, I reinstalled the serpentine and everything looked great. This was a new serpentine that I had installed only about 3 weeks ago.
Yesterday I was backing out of my parents’ driveway when I hear one of those teeth chattering screeches that belts make when something is wrong with your power steering. I start to cut the wheel and suddenly I’ve got no power-assist. I pull back into the driveway and shut it down. Pop the hood and my new serpentine is shredded. The majority of the grooved rubber is still there on the pulleys but the Kevlar strands have all separated and are wound around every pulley. It looks like one edge of the belt (engine side) started to wear away and then the smooth side of the belt that holds the strands inside split open. Then the strands shot out like a confetti gun.
I had to wait a while for the engine to cool off, but I started working on getting all the spaghetti out of the pulley’s and the worst one was the power steering pump. After cutting, pulling, yanking, and cursing for about 30 minutes I got all the strands out, only to discover that the front seal on the power steering pump had suffered a major blow. The last few strands of Kevlar had been sopping wet and the fluid had been dripping pretty steadily on my dad’s driveway. With the serpentine belt off I start looking for what could have caused the belt to disintegrate. All the idlers looked good and all the accessory pulleys looked good…except that the alternator pulley looked to be a little bit out of alignment. By eyeballing it from over head and sighting it up with the compressor pulley below it, I could tell that the pulley was too far back (towards the engine). It’s off by maybe ½ to 1 groove and that short distance that the belt travels to the compressor only amplifies the issue causing the belt to fray.
After putting on my old belt which I luckily kept as a spare, we head for home. On the way Cat calls Brian from ACC. We decide that we’re driving on borrowed time already, so I head straight for the ACC garage. By the time I get within two blocks of the garage the power steering fluid has completely dumped and I have no power assist again – good timing. Brian meets us at the garage, opens up the gate and I show him where I think the misalignment has occurred. It’s not something he’s seen happen before, but I’ll look into it with him more this week. Maybe we install some spacers or maybe we got a flawed alternator. Additionally, I need to look into a rebuild kit for my power steering pump.
Sorry I didn’t take any pics of the mess, but I was pretty frustrated at the time and I mustered all the calmness I could trying not to get my “Sunday clothes” dirty.

On a good note, Cat worked on Bertha on Saturday and we got the transfer case leak taken care of, with a speedy sleeve, some new gaskets and a lot of Toyota red RTV goo (ATF safe, because her t-case uses tranny fluid instead of gear oil).
