Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 A most puzzling development. 

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Here's how the belt should run.
The crank pulley is #5.

Another Chapter in the, "My Daughter moved her car 120 miles" away saga.  

I got another one of those calls from my Daughter; "Dad, the car is making a weird noise." The noise was apparent when she started it up. It didn't matter if the car was moving. She sent me a recording, exactly what I wanted to wake up to! I told her that I would get back to her. 

A couple of days later I asked her to help me by doing some diagnostics. First, I wanted her to open the windows, then to start the motor, but to be sure that the a/c was off. This way we could possibly eliminate that as a source of the noise. I then asked her to drive it around the parking lot. This way if anything bad happened, she would be close to a parking spot! I asked her to note if the noise got louder, or changed as she moved the car. Was the driving of the car affected? 

The answers were that the noise was there even if the car wasn't moving, with or without the a/c on. It got a little worse at 25 mph. I asked her to open the hood and see if the sound was louder. It was. My Daughter looked around and she noticed that the serpentine belt looked kind of off. It didn't look like it was on the right part of the pulley. She sent some photos, and even drew a little diagram. She added that it looked like the belt was on the rubber part of the pulley, instead of the grooved part.

The following photos were sent to me by my Daughter. She did a good job in illustrating where the noise was coming from, and where the problem was. Smartphones can help make my diagnostic work easier. I also got a couple of videos with sound. 

The sound was coming from the front of the engine.

It appeared to be coming from down there!

Aha! That is the culprit. 
It is running on the rubber part!

She drew her own diagram

I had replaced the belt and tensioner less than 1,000 miles ago. But I guess that something could have happened. I told her that I'd be up there in a couple of days. My plan was to exchange cars, and leave her my red Mustang.

After driving up I took a look under the hood.

She was right. Sure enough the belt was resting on the rubber part of the pulley, instead of resting in the metal ring. It was in front of it, how could that have happened? Maybe something had been kicked up from the road and had gone under the belt causing it to jump off. I relieved the pressure on the tensioner and put the belt back in the right place, I started it up and the noise came back almost immediately, and the belt went back to the same position.

Maybe one of the accessory pulleys had become misaligned. But how? I checked every one, and they all turned true, so I put the belt back on.  I noticed that the part that ran from the tensioner to the crank pulley looked out of line. How could that be? Then it dawned on me, my Daughter had been right, the belt shouldn't be spinning on the rubber in front of the metal pulley. The metal pulley had separated from the rubber isolator and had moved rearwards, about an inch and a half, resulting in the belt jumping off. 

What I referred to as #5 in the opening diagram as the crank pulley is properly referred to as the harmonic dampener. It is usually constructed of three parts. 1) the crank pulley bolted to the crankshaft snout. 2) the metal pulley ring that the belt runs on, and 3) the rubber isolater that goes between those parts and is bonded to form a single unit. 

I had read about something like this happening in the Jaguar Forums. It affected the engines in XJ6s like my X300. But these had just shifted in position around a circular rotation, affecting the timing mark. Some of the guys had tried to stop the movement using superglue. 

I spent an hour trying to pry the metal ring back into position. I finally got back where it should be. Then I went to store and bought some super glue. I was hoping that the fix might hold long enough to drive it home. I'd reduce the load by keeping the a/c off. I transferred all my tools into her car. I thought that I should try it out before I told her that I'm leaving my car. So I started it up. Hah! it only held for a few seconds before the pulley moved and the belt jumped. 

Well that plan didn't work. The car would have to be repaired locally, but at least I knew what the problem was. I'd have to arrange something with a local shop. 

Later at home, I looked up the price of the dampener on Rock Auto, and found some at around 100.00. I figured that I might get charged closer to 200.00 for the part, and at least a couple of hours labor at 100.00 per hour. So the repair would hopefully be around 400.00 

Lucky for me, I always seem to enjoy the long drive back, which was made in my '96 Mustang. It's an over 200 mile round trip that gives the car it's needed exercise. The plan was to find a local shop, once I got home, then have my Daughter arrange to have AAA tow the car there. 

Finding a repair shop is difficult, especially in an unknown area, and it's especially difficult for a guy that is used to doing their own car repair. The Meineke shop that I had tried earlier had given me a bad vibe, much like my local Ford dealer. I was also looking for something closer and more convenient. My first choice was the actual Triple A repair shop, I figured that they would treat their members right. I asked if they could give me an estimate of how much the job would cost, they said that they couldn't unless they had the car in the shop. This is pretty much the standard response anywhere, and it is a reasonable answer. They would have an opening in the coming week. Many shops are squeezed for available parking/storage space and can't handle having the customer drop off the car earlier than they can schedule the repair. 

Then I called a local family owned shop that had been in business for a long time, Vicker's Automotive repair. It had a lot of positive Yelp reviews. When I called I spoke to David the service writer. What really impressed me, was that when I explained what the problem was, he actually listened to my diagnosis. I asked if he could give me an idea on the cost. He was willing to give an actual estimate, but he did caution me that this would be based on the fact that there were no additional issues. He called me back later with a quote of 480.00. This wasn't too much more than I had expected. I am probably out of touch with the current cost of shop labor. I was also happy that they could take the car in the following week. Another plus was that they could handle having the car dropped off earlier, which would make it easier on my Daughter's scheduling. Altogether I was quite pleased and told David that I would get back to him. 

I decided that I would take an active role in getting this done. My last intervention with this car seemed to drag on and on. It is usually a four hour plus round trip to Sacramento. That's a bit of time, but on many days I can easily waste four hours in a leisurely breakfast, followed by a couple of cups of coffee while I peruse the internet. There was no real reason for me to put this off.  I decided to drive up to help my daughter arrange a tow to get the car to the shop, and let the shop know that I would pay for the repair. I called Vicker's and advised them that my Daughter would be bringing in the car on Tuesday morning. I needed to get this problem resolved, and get it off my mind, where it does weigh kind of heavily. Git 'er done! 

This time I drove up in my '06 Mustang, I really do need to drive this car more. It's convenient that it's equipped with an aftermarket dash mounted GPS.  After the car was towed to the shop, we contacted the people in the front office. The office was clean, neat, and modestly decorated.  I met David, who was behind the counter, and the lady that handled the paperwork, and both were friendly. The shop and storage lot was spacious and looked neat and well ordered. I arranged to handle payment over the phone. There was a sign on the counter advising their customers that the shop labor charge had been increased from 120.00 an hour to 140.00. Well, now I know. I got a good vibe from the shop and was hoping that this could become the "go to" shop for anything automotive that my Daughter might need. 

The drive home was very enjoyable, besides the GPS, the dash unit still has a single disc CD player! It's also got some Bluetooth thing as well as a back up camera. I brought along some of my CD collection, I'm not ready to move on from this format yet! My '06 GT is a great road car, it feels really fast, sounds amazing, and tracks down the road steady as can be. Real world fuel economy is quite good. According to the trip computer, I achieved 22.7 mpg. on the trip up, hurrying as I was in a bit of a hurry. Going home, I took it easy, and this was reflected in an increase to 24.6 mpg. all on the lowest price regular grade fuel. I can live with this kind of mileage. This is a very quick and fast car, it will go 140 mph! And, it is still quite economical. To get appreciably higher mileage I would have to move down to a V6, or even a four cylinder power plant, both which are available within the current Mustang envelope. I might decide to investigate these alternatives in the future. However for the moment, the '06 is my perfect car.

I got a call the next day from my Daughter telling me that the Mustang was already done. They had completed the job on that same day. Great. I don't anticipate any problems with the repair, and hopefully it will be smooth sailing for awhile. 

Fingers and toes crossed!