So only yesterday I started up my truck with 54k miles on it, and heard a slight whining,purr which I knew to immediately to most likely be the serpentine belt or one of the pulleys it is running on. I was only driving around the property in order to move equipment and trailers around and so made a note to check it at the end of the day. Well it was dark by the time I had finished, so this morning when I started up I popped the hood to try to pinpiont it more. Check the belt, it was riding fine, looking fine , though it did feel just a bit slack to to me. Decided that I would park it down at the garage at the end of today, and use a stick or stethoscope to try to pin point which pulley was bad, and then order some parts in the morning, BUT .....
I also decided that I could use the truck to do a dump run as the belt looked fine, and the whine was not terrible and I wanted to clear out some junk before the rains really hit.
Well, just AFTER finishing loading the truck, of course, but just BEFORE I drove off, I was taking a quick whizz, when I heard a quiet but definite diffrence in the engine noise. I realized quickly that the noise was the belt shredding, RAN back to the truck (probably got a few drops on my pants leg in my haste
) to turn it off and popped the hood...
WOW--The belt which had looked normal only a half hour earlier was now 1/4 shredded as it ran off the front of the alternator pulley. BUMMER, but could have been much worse if it had happened AFTER I had left, OR if I hadn't stoppped to take a leak with the truck idling, I probably would not have heard it from inside the cab, though of course as the mighty CTD died on me, I certainly would have figured it out. STILL, no foul and no harm done, as I was only 300 feet away from ny garage, only now with a loaded truck. Decideid to drive it back in, just as I got headed inside, I heard more shredding, so I killed the motor and coasted in. When I got out to check, over half the belt was gone!!
Since I do not want to run my engine any more, I can't necessarily tell whether it was the belt tensioner pulley that is gone bad, or another pulley. SOOOOOOO...my question is this--
How likely is it that ANOTHER pulley other then the belt tensioner was causing the belt to ride forward and cause the whining that I heard????
ALSO, If it turns out that it was the tensioner that failed, is it better to replace it with a Mopar unit or the Gates that Genos sells. I seem to remember that some people have had problems with repeat Belt Tensioner failure. Was there a bad run of them, or something??
Thanks for feedback on Belts and Tensioner asssemblies AND advice on checking the other pullies now that I can't run the engine. Speaking of which, my LAST question is...
Does anything TERRIBLE happen to our mighty CTDs if the serpentine belt breaks DURING operation??
Thanks for your time!