It recently snowed where I live, and vehicles tend to experience all sorts of mechanical issues due to the colder weather. Parts that are slightly worn, can suddenly experience failure because they were barely within their tolerances in milder conditions, and the weather difference was enough to cause a failure.
I got a call last night at around 11:30 from a friend who was returning from a trip. She was pulled off on the side of the road, and her Mazda 3 had just randomly stopped running. She stated that at first her heat turned off, then the battery light turned on, and finally the engine just stopped altogether. She coasted to the side of the road, and called me for assistance. As I was driving, I thought about how, when I first acquired my Chevy Suburban, I had a similar situation occur, and it was due to the serpentine belt coming off the pulleys. Arriving, I asked her to pop the hood, and confirmed that is exactly what happened.
(This picture was taken today, but that’s exactly what I saw when I looked down inside the engine bay).
The car turned off because the crankshaft drives a pulley, which drives a belt that drives additional pulleys for the alternator and the water pump. When the belt dislodged from the pulley system, the alternator and water pump weren’t spinning, and generating power or pushing coolant. The heat cut out because the heater core that runs the cabin transfers heat from the engine coolant as it’s pumped through the engine. When the water pump stopped spinning, there was no more hot coolant being pumped through the heater core. The same thing occurred with the alternator. When the alternator, electricity was not being generated, and the engine drained the battery, stalling the engine due to a lack of sparking from the spark plugs.
I had the car towed to my house, and I dropped her off at her place. It was around 1 am this morning when the car finally arrived at my house, so I went to bed, and woke up the next morning to work on it.
I cut the serpentine belt off, and the AC stretch belt off. The serpentine belt had split (picture below), and that splitting was the reason the belt dislodged from the pulley. The belt likely was already fairly worn (it was 14 years old), and the cold temperatures probably hardened it enough that when the car was started, and a load was put on the belt, it finally split and came off. The AC belt had to be cut because it is a stretch belt, meaning it doesn’t use a tensioner. It’s a pain to put on, and you can’t take it off without cutting it (I’m sure there’s someone out there who figured out a way to do it, I just never found it).
The belt was split.
New belt installed.
New AC stretch belt installed. I used the zip tie method, where you zip tie the belt to the pulley, the turn the crankshaft over, and worm the belt on.
New belt spinning great.
New AC belt installed.
Test driving it.
The overall job wasn’t that difficult. It was raining, and about 40F degrees outside, so I got soaked, and fairly cold. However, I fixed it, and the vehicle ran just fine. Belts are often overlooked, but make sure you’re checking up on them every once in a while. Maintenance is seldom ever difficult, but having a part as simple and mundane as a belt break on you while you’re driving in the middle of the night in freezing temperatures, is not a good thing to have to experience.