Scary Moment

[master964]

So it was Sunday and before ready to put the car back into the garage could not resist to take it out for one last time until next week.

1/2 a mile down the road and I can smell rubber burning inside the car.....and then smoke....here we go lets call the fire brigade....

I Stop nothing obvious inside or around the front bay...opened the engine and nothing there until I started the car up..

One of the belts had snapped off...a bit unsual as the inner AC belt is fine and the outer belt was fine however the centre one had snapped.

So what is does this belt do as to me the outer one does the same task as the middle one.

Struggling to find a techincal article for this....

Suggestions welcome....

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

Siraj,

The outermost belt - the one nearest the back of the car - is the one that drives the AC compressor, the next one in - the middle belt - drives the alternator and the innermost belt drives the cooling fan. It looks like the inner two belts do the same thing, but they don't since there is no drive connection between the fan and the alternator.

With the middle belt broken there is no drive to the alternator and, hence, no charge going into the battery.

It's worth noting that the RS has a slightly different pulley arrangement where only a single belt drives both fan AND alternator.

It may be worth investigating WHY the belt broke as it can sometimes be a symptom of a failing alternator bearing.

Regards

Dave

 

[mcgc0]

Dave, does that mean then that you can do an RS conversion easy enough and dispense with a pointless belt and pully..?

 

[master964]

Thanks Dave.

With the car in storage for best part of three years prior to my 14 months of ownership, I hope it is down to a perished belt.

Now do I tackle its replacement or pass it over to my Chris at GCR central in Leicester. Is it worth doing anything else at the same time considering it had its service on purchase around 1400 miles ago and 14 months. I don't think the plugs were changed but all other service items were.

Kind Regards

S

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

ORIGINAL: mcgc0

Dave, does that mean then that you can do an RS conversion easy enough and dispense with a pointless belt and pully..?

Sorry Marcus for the delay in answering - for some reason your post didn't come up on my "New Posts" list.

Converting to a single pulley is not without it's issues - largely because it results in the alternator rotation being reduced from 2x engine speed to 1.6x engine speed. This is not an issue for a track-biased car but may be more questionable for a daily driver with A/C etc. etc. etc. With the engine at idle it's likely that the alternator will not be charging the battery.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Dave