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Well, I've got a mystery here..
On our 89 240DL the alternator siezed up.. ugh to forget about turning the alt, and still turn the fan
I grabbed a suspected good alternator off an 85 we have here for parts.. The replacement one isn't exactly the correct amperage, but had all the same connections so I figured it would work.
This alternator was a little stuck, from not having been turned in a while, but freed up pretty easily. When it was on the old '85, it worked fine, and on one belt at that. That car had a dead AC compressor, so one of the alt belts had be re-routed to the PS pump. Since that car was a rust bucket when we got it, no one wanted to bother fixing the A/C on it.. and yes, you can drive for years on one alternator belt just fine.
But on the 89 I was going to use 2 belts like you're supposed to, since this car is a keeper.
Partially becuase I didn't want to spend the money ($60 for 2 belts!) or didn't trust myself to somehow botch it up and ruin them, I got Continental belts from an import auto store. I didn't know at the time that they were supposed to be matched pairs, and these may or may not have been matched. The numbers on the box seemed to indicate that they were sequentially numbered (?)
Installing them was a most miserable thing I've ever had to do on a car, taking all those other belts off first, but i did figure out a few tricks. And guess what? Now I have to do it all again!
it's 4 days later, and I decided to check the belt tension, and INSTEAD the front belt is completely gone -traces of black rubbery powder on the exhaust manifold are all that remain of it. And the rearmost belt is super loose and worn down to about half it's size.. the car had literally only travelled maybe 150 miles in the 4 days since I've done the belts.. What the hell did I do wrong?
I've since learned that everyone here recommends matched pairs, but I can't imagine that the consequences of using un-matched belts is that they'll only last for 4 days!
I thought I had the belts at the correct tension, but I suppose there's a chance they were too tight.. The PS and the AC pump belts are perfectly fine, and I tensioned the alternator belt to about the same amount of play.
We also have another car where we went through belts frequently (like every couple of months) and the culprit there was worn mounting bushings, so that the alternator sat cockeyed.. This alternator is fine, and everything is straight.. And like I said, we used this alt for years on the 85 with one belt and it was trouble free. So it can't be that. The replacement alt also turns just fine, so it's not like it seized like the old one.
So I guess that leaves one culprit- rusty pulleys? Like I said, this alt only ran on one belt all the time we owned the car, so the front pulley was always empty, and kinda rusty.. Can rusty pulleys really tear through belts alarmingly quick? The front pulley isn't nearly as rusty as it was anymore though.
So, I'm glad I didn't blow the money on real volvo belts ($29 each). If it's rusty pulleys, they probably would have torn through them just as quickly. Do you all think I might just have to burn through a couple of pairs of alternator belts before the pulleys are smooth enough not to act like sandpaper?
-Bricky
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