Snapped Serpentine Belt Tensioner Left Our Videographer Stuck on the Highway

Hey, everyone. Sue here from 1A Auto. And it is a beautiful day in here in New England. But it is not for Mr. Torin, who is our videographer, one of them. And he broke down on the way to work today. So he was driving along, heard a pop sound, all the lights on the dash came on, battery light, engine light, and the cooling gauge went wooop. And then he lost power steering. I'm going with the belt, but what caused that belt to come off? And we're gonna find out fresh with you.

So we popped the hood up, and it shows anything? There it is. This serp belt is off. Now, I don't know what caused this, or why. For his sake, I hope it's something simple, but I'm going to take it off the rest of the way so we don't ruin it anymore. And then I'm gonna get this thing started up. If we have to use a battery pack, we will. I'm gonna drive it in so we can get out of this hot sun. And let's find out what's going on with it.

Okay, so we brought her in, inside, out of the hot sun, and took the belt off. And what I could see here is we are missing one whole roll of rubber teeth on this serpentine belt. And if you look right straight down here, you can see that tensioner in the back. Its spring is broken and it's popped off. So we're gonna raise her up and get a better view.

So now that we have lifted it up, we can get closer to that tensioner. And yeah, it's a mess. Spring broke right on it. It's ready to come out right from the centerpiece. But before we go rushing and replacing this, obviously, it needs that, but make sure it didn't cause anything else, like anything else caused this to break. Make sure all your pulleys are good. You get your harmonic balancer. I'm gonna check for endplay. This is the AC. Now, if the clutches are good or bad, I can't tell you because the AC is not activated right now, but at least the bearing, I can hear bearing noise when I do that inside this pump. Not too worried about that.

Power steering, moves freely. The other tensioner, no noise and moves freely. Has no wobble to it so the bearings are still good. And the same with the water pump, I'm gonna check for any bearing damage. And it spins freely. Alternator is on top, not lower, check that.

So we lowered it down. Now we're gonna check out the alternator. It's the last pulley really to check out here. I'm gonna lift the reservoir tank out of the way, then I get my hand right on that alternator. Perfect, no problems. So at this point, we have no coolant. Now, I'm gonna say there's no fresh coolant leaks but I did find the upper radiator hose which goes to the thermostat housing clip to be seeping, so I see old trails of it. So I got to tell Mr. Torin to start checking his coolant in between oil changes to confirm that it's just running low all the time. But the light came on, obviously, because the alternator wasn't charging because the belt fell off. That will make the whole dash light up like Christmas. So at this point, let's get a tensioner and a serp belt, and try it out.

So in conclusion, what we found with this towed-in vehicle was the serp belt tensioner. And look what happened, it broke right off on the inside. So the housing is supposed to be turned right in there and it broke right apart. And that made the belt right off and rode on one rib so then ended up destroying the belt. So, in conclusion, in the future, if you have a car that you haven't done a belt to in 50k, 60k, don't just change the belt, you know, really pay attention to the tensioner and your idler pulleys. Check them for noise with the bearings, see if they growl. Any play is not tolerable. And make sure that spring tension, if you have one, has a good, strong tension to it and doesn't stick or isn't even have any much tension to it at all. Those are all signs that they need to be replaced.

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